


do not fear, for I am with you

by koosjunhoe



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: F/M, Heavy Angst, Hell of a lot of Angst, Military Background, Slow Build, Slow Burn, and also unsure feelings, and unspoken feelings, becomes a hitman, gets hired by edens gate and takes a hitman friend, oc is ex special ops, to summarise:
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2020-10-21 11:14:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 37,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20692595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/koosjunhoe/pseuds/koosjunhoe
Summary: 'So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.' - Isaiah 41:10"You understand the risks of what I am asking?"She nods once, placing her hand on the bible placed in front of her. "It is for the betterment of those around us. If I do not follow the will of the Father, the Collapse will come.""Right." He hums in agreement with her statement, looking back to the men who stand around behind them. He gestures for them to leave, the Chosen following his command and walking away without question. Once the door is shut, he pulls the bible from under her hand and pushes it away. "Could you for once go against what he tells you to do, and instead do what I want you to do?"





	1. preface

**Author's Note:**

> i've had this idea since i very first finished fc5 and wanted to get it down in writing to so you can all (hopefully) enjoy it too. i'm european so don't know that much about america outside of videogames, so pls excuse anything that is wrong there. i hope you do enjoy this, though this first chapter is more of an intro than anything, into the ocs Cicely, Luca, and Ruben. 
> 
> SRR (special reconnaissance regiment) is a branch of the uk version of special ops (special forces).

DO NOT FEAR, FOR I AM WITH YOU

* * *

_ "So do not fear, for I am with you;  do not be dismayed, for I am your God.  I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand." - **Isiah 41:10** _

* * *

After being declared unfit for service, Cicely Larson joins a covert group S.U.A to undertake paid work as a mercenary, an assassin, whatever she was needed to be. After travelling across the world to undertake work, she is sent to the home of the mountains; Hope County, Montana. She finds herself in a religious war between the inhabitants of the county and those who call themselves _Eden's Gate. _Under the guise of a preacher, the religious cult wishes to force more people into their arms and save them from what was written almost 2000 years ago.

* * *

Suggested Playlist:

  1. Drag The Lake - The Amity Affliction
  2. I'd Rather See Your Star Explode - Slaves
  3. Givin' Up - Emarosa
  4. So Bad - Emarosa
  5. DEVIL - Shinedown
  6. Stop the Rain - Day6
  7. The River - Good Charlotte
  8. sorry - The Rose
  9. Deja Vu - Dreamcatcher 
  10. Shoot Me - Day6
  11. Drown - Bring Me The Horizon 
  12. **누군가 필요해 **I Need Somebody - Day6
  13. Na Na Na - My Chemical Romance
  14. Death By Love - YONAKA 
  15. Wisteria - Hands like Houses
  16. How You Remind Me - Nickelback
  17. why you gotta kick me when i'm down - Bring Me The Horizon
  18. I'm Made of Wax, Larry, What Are You Made Of - A Day To Remember
  19. Backseat Serenade (Acoustic) - All Time Low
  20. NLYF x Neck Deep - Issues
  21. Enough - Normandie 
  22. Someone, Somewhere - Asking Alexandria
  23. The Death Of Me - Asking Alexandria 
  24. Teach Me To Fight - YONAKA 
  25. F.W.T.B. - grandson Remix - YONAKA 
  26. Don't Wait 'Til Tomorrow - YONAKA


	2. do not worry for tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself

_'Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own_ _.' – **Matthew 6:25, 33-34**_

** **

“There’s a bounty over your head, Soldier.”

Despite the silence that falls over all the souls that sit in the room, the tension is discarded by a single laugh from the lips of exactly who the words are directed to. The possibility of _another _fight is dismissed as quickly as the very soldier is brought to her feet, the variety of enlisted around the pair continuing with the conversations they preferred to have.

“I’m not a soldier,” Cicely states, using her senior to pull her to her feet. She winces when she puts weight onto her left thigh, still recovering from her injuries sustained just under a month ago. She holds her thigh through her pants, pleased that there isn’t any notion of blood seeping through the wound. “Though I appreciate you mistake me for one when I’m told what to do and sent to places I don’t want to be.”

Ruben hums, the beginning of a trademark smile tugging on his lips. He rests his arm against the side of his chest, allowing Cicely to use it as a walking aid. Once her fingers are around his lower arm, he begins to lead her away from the table. “You’re going to have to play soldier for a while.”

“You’ve got a new job for me?” Cicely asks.

“Fortunately, word of your… _talents,_” Ruben pauses for a moment to open the door to his office, which looks out onto a corridor away from the dining room,“can reach further than Europe. Someone is offering a lot of money to see you. More than you made on the last two combined. It’s a great offer for someone who has a tyrant chasing their ass.”

“Tell me the real story here and I’ll consider whether it’s worth being dead for another few months. Contacts don’t ask for anyone directly. I remember what you told me when I met you.”

Ruben nods. He helps her down into the chair opposite to his wooden desk, proceeding to take a seat opposite to her and pull a paper file from his drawer. He throws it down onto the desk, caring little for the rest of his paperwork. Though he is quick to push Cicely’s hand away when she tries to reach for it, bringing her thoughts back to the possibility that this was out of her requested area. More intelligence, she asked for, and he gave her far from what she asked each time

“Are they terrorists?” she asks.

“Perhaps.” Ruben pulls a picture from the side of the file and places it in front of her. There’s a date written on the bottom from two weeks previous in black marker. “They’re paying a lot of money for ex-special ops.”

Cicely hums at his words as she picks up the picture. She stares down at a scene which seems no different to an ordinary farm at first instance, though more than a few seconds of staring and it becomes clear that there is a different story told. Symbols on the walls, destroyed flags in the background, and a clear shot of explosives in the corner.

She places the picture down with hesitation. “I’m not special ops. I’m not even American.”

“You were special recon. That’s just an equivalent of. You’re the only one here who was close to it and has that kind of training. You’ll be the most trained out of anyone there, and most likely the smartest. It’s the perfect opportunity to help them wage whatever war they have going on, make more money than you need and buy yourself an island where your past can’t find you.”

“And the war they're waging, what is it?”

“You ask too many questions.”

“I _was _special recon.”

Ruben refrains from rolling his eyes as he opens the file and picks the pictures from it, placing them to the side. He flicks through the papers until he finds a dossier that is marked as confidential. “Religious cult that America doesn’t care all too much for. As far as the government is concerned, they’re a peaceful group who take care of those who wish to commit to God and their faith. Their war is against the non-believers who don’t care about the words from _the Father_. Self-proclaimed messenger of God who wants to lead everyone to salvation and chose Montana to do it. They call themselves Eden’s Gate, or the Project at Eden’s Gate.”

“_Eden’s Gate,_” Cicley repeats with caution, “the government don’t care about them? They must be doing something right when a government who cares the most about religion cares the least about them.”

“I was under the impression that morality did not matter to you, Soldier.”

Cicely looks down to the pictures in an effort to avoid reaching Ruben’s eyes. She looks over the collection, familiarising herself with the people that are grouped together. Faces begin to appear more often as she goes through them, one particular face standing out to her as a leader.

She points to the face of a man with yellow-tinted glasses and looks back to Ruben curiously. “Their leader?”

“Joseph Seed,” Ruben affirms, “has his two brothers and sister in on it as well. One brother is recruiting people and the one you will be with. He’s ex-army, declared unfit for service. You will have a lot to talk about.”

For a brief moment, Cicely considers arguing back at his words, though her years working with Ruben have taught her that an argument with him is not one to be had. She realises from his persistence that there was one answer she could give to this, as well. “How long for?”

“Until their war is won, I assume.”

“Enough time to convince the past that I’m gone?” Cicely questions. She closes the file for Ruben, pushing his pictures back inside. “I’ll be in the middle of nowhere until a cult war ends. That’s enough time for you to not speak with me and convince everyone I _am _dead. What’s your cut?”

Ruben shakes his head. “It’s not about the cut.”

“Tell me how much.”

“They’re giving me a quarter of a mil just for sending you there.”

Cicely’s eyes widen from his words. “Shit.”

“I’m asking you to do this so that I have an opportunity to help everyone here,” Ruben tells her, placing the file back in his drawer. He replaces it with a plastic mail bag. “I get that what happened to you before was fucked up, but you need to realise that everyone here is in the same boat. We’ve all been failed by the system and got some free training along the way. You just happen to be better than others. Not all of us can say we were one of the few. I can’t keep sending you to remote islands in the hopes that one of your old friends find you.”

“Let me take Luca with me.”

Ruben eyes are narrowed at her request. “He’s doesn’t have the right background. He’s a kid hacker who got found and wanted help. Sure he can hack a computer, but they don’t even have computers there. Some shit they have about not needing more than trusting God to clothe and feed them. What can he do about that?”

“I’ve trained him since he got here,” Cicely reminds Ruben, “he spent every day with me in Indonesia. I’m not leaving him here so you put him in the same position as me when the next religious cult comes along and needs someone who is somewhere close to being special ops.”

“He can be used elsewhere to—”

“He’s a kid, Ruben. You can’t send him to the middle of nowhere without someone who knows him. He’s not special ops, but he can be a soldier alongside me. If it’s a war with country folk then he will do perfectly fine. I’m sure two-fifty will cover his costs as well as mine.”

Another silence looms between the pair of them as Ruben reluctantly nods in agreement with her request. It’s his turn to not argue now, a decision that is far wiser. He writes a note to himself on a notepad to his side and sighs as he turns back to Cicely. “I’ll let them know we will be sending two people.”

Choosing not to reply, Cicely uses the side of the chair to get her to her feet uses the wall to limp to the door half-heartedly. She turns back to Ruben with a haze of red over her eyes and pats her left leg. “Better get me a brace for this so that they don’t take money off the price in the end.”

She shuts his door without hearing a reply, taking small steps with the continuing limp until she reached the hall she came from once again. She leans against the door frame, keeping her eyes on the back of Luca’s head where he sat in the corner. It only takes a few moments before the young boy can sense her and turns around to see who exactly is giving him a death stare.

Though he smiles brightly on meeting Cicely’s eyes, it disappears when he realises how she looks at him. She beckons him with her right hand, choosing to disappear around the corner when Lucas abandons his lunch and makes his way to her. With her current physical condition, it doesn’t take too long for him to catch up to her and place his arm around her shoulders to help her walk.

“Why did Ruben want you?” he asks curiously, looking down to Cicely, “did he find out that we did sink that boat in Indonesia? Shit, he must have been so mad. You should have said that it was me, you know he’d go easy on me. He still thinks of me as his son.”

Cicely shakes her head solemnly. “Unfortunately it’s worse than a boat.”

“What’s worse than Ruben being mad at you for destroying a _yacht_? You know that guy cares more about money than anything and is a right asshole if you cost him! Remember in Yamatai when accidentally destroyed a mask in the middle of the Monastery? Even for that, he was pissed cause that doctor said it was worth a bit.”

“He found a contract which pays a lot,” Cicely tells him, ignoring his words about their senior. She stops, turning directly to Luca with a seriousness that he doesn’t usually see from her. “He’s getting two-fifty for just sending me there. That makes up for any boat or mask or sword we accidentally blew up.”

Luca pouts, youth clear in his features. “I’ve gotta stick around here for ages without you?”

“You’re coming with me,” Cicely gestures with her head to carry on walking, “I told him I wouldn’t go unless you came with me. I know he’ll just send you out wherever if he gets the chance to, and since you have weak-ass bones I’m not trusting you on your own yet. So you and I are going to join a religious cult.”

“Religious cult?”

“They needed special ops, for whatever reason. I said that I trained you and considering that these guys seem serious, they’re most likely going to put us through shit to test us out. So I need you to remember everything I taught you in Indonesia and get ready to put it in practice. Read the bible, too.”

Luca matches her original disdain. He guides her towards the room he had been allocated, pushing the door open for her and setting her down on the back. He sits on the desk chair, one he had to request for _way _too long, and pulls his mac from the desk.

“What’s the cult’s name?” Luca asks as he opens the mac.

“Eden’s Gate,” Cicely tells him, “I don’t know a whole lot, just that they’re led by someone who says he talks to God. I can only assume we are jumping straight into the nuthouse and that, confirmed by Ruben, we will be the smartest there.”

Luca doesn’t reply to her words, focused on the screen which illuminates his raven hair. He scrolls down some of the pages, stopping after a while to read some more. “They don’t have a webpage, but some journalist did an article on that place and posted some videos. You’re right about the nuthouse. Look.”

He turns the screen towards Cicely with a grimace, showing a brief clip of some interviews that had been done with the people in the town. Three different people, one of them a pastor who expressed his love for the place, how beautiful it was around _Hope County. _Another tells of the people and how ugly they were, that it was a cult around them. Between played a clip of the very people, inside a sermon delivered by one who resembled one in the pictures that were shown to Cicely by Ruben.

It ends with the call of someone betraying them, that they did not have faith. His hands are tied behind his back and the Father places his hands on his face only to _make him see_, covering his two thumbs with the blood of the innocent. It sends a shiver down Cicely’s spine as she sees the man fall to the ground with a single thud. The Father raises his hands like he’s a god himself.

“It’s got barely any views at all. They don’t care about whatever is going on there. I don’t know about this, Li, I think it’s gonna end with us in the middle of a prison without any food for days. You know how cults are. The fact that this is all I can find on it… something is going on there that Ruben ain’t telling you.”

“He has a whole file to debrief us with and we will find out everything. We worry about the little details when they throw us out of the aeroplane and leave us to the wolves. The journalist is still alive?”

Luca clicks around some more, scanning for information before he can give a reply. “Hasn’t posted for 9 weeks. Used to post every few days so not normal activity. Could be one of them now?”

“Unlikely, you saw what they did to the non-believer on that video. It may be the case that we are going in like blind mice,” Cicely replies. She pulls her fingers back through her hair so that it is out of her face and closes her eyes. She’s still for a moment before she pinches the bridge of her nose in frustration. “Ruben is using this to get rid of my bridges to Hong Kong. _You know. _I’m being punished because he chose me the wrong job all those years ago. He’s throwing me into the middle of nowhere so that I become a ghost.”

“Being a ghost isn’t all bad. You get dogs.”

“This is a bit different to a first-person shooter. At the very least I want a better ending. If I end up getting tortured, I won’t be very happy about this. Even then, I’d rather be a _Logan Walker _than a _Cicely Larson. _I won’t even get my own Riley at the end of it.”

Luca finds some amusement in her words. “You can just pay them off with the money they’re giving you.”

“I don’t think they want money if they’re contacting individual directors for special ops. They’ve got some real fucked up shit going on down there and part of me thinks that we’re helping the wrong people win. Just this time, they will actually win.”

“Let’s double-cross them, then!” Luca puts his mac on the desk with a sudden burst of energy, jumping to his feet and running to lock the door. “We go in there, we act all _we love you God _for twenty minutes and U100 then until they never return from Eden. For justice, we take out that Father’s two eyes and make sure everyone knows that _we _saved them. We live in the middle of that place for the rest of our years in a nice mansion, I’ll get myself a hot girl and you can get yourself a cat. How about that?”

Cicely is too tired to crack a smile, though she reaches her hand out to Luca to pull him so he sits next to her. She places her hand on his shoulder afterward, patting him gently. “I’m sorry for dragging you into this. I would rather it be me who gets you killed than him.”

“I would have only asked Ruben to send me too.” Luca attempts to reassure her, though Cicely has spent too much time with him to know deep down he’s got his concerns. Be it as much as her is unlikely, though it takes a special type of person to walk into something without feeling. He smiles weakly as he points to a picture of him and his parents at the Grand Canyon. “You know I’ve always wanted to go back to America. 49 more and I’ve got every state.”

“Only 48 for you now,” she reminds him, reminding herself of the picture of the family in the church she was forced to care about.


	3. God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “How many years experience?” Jacob asks, looking towards Cicely for an answer. He leans forward, elbows on the desk in front of him. “Between the two of you, I would say no more than five.”
> 
> Luca glances to Cicely before he clears his throats and stutters out an answer instead, “I’ve… I’ve actually got none. But five is right.”
> 
> “Five.” Jacob’s repetition of the number is a jab in Cicely’s ribs. He hums to himself, almost amused. “Five years. And what did that get you?”
> 
> Cicely remain emotionless for a moment, assessing him as best she can. A nihilistic type. No one is better than me guy. Perfect antagonist for any story. “Nothing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as before, I hope you do like this! i guess i'm trying to introduce everything but also not rush it as well? either way, next chapter things will most definitely pick up. you will definitely learn more about both cicely and luca, as well as jacob! :)

_For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline. So do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner. Rather, join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God. – _ ** _2 Timothy 1: 6 – 8_ **

Despite the heat that beams directly from the sun, no clouds in the sky to stop the rays, an awful chill runs down Cicely’s spine as she steps off the chopper onto the ruined grass and mud of the place which she had been dreading the most. She keeps her sunglasses down, covering her concerned eyes that track her entire surroundings.

They’ve been left in the middle of a clearing, right between the mountains which act as a barrier to the outside world. Amongst the trees which are sporadically growing, covering that which needs to remain a secret, lies a building which would appear abandoned. The yellow paint on the exterior walls is dirty, covering in soot and generally faded from lack of care over the years. The gates which surround it are still sharp, though some are bent and appear to have guarded the building well.

_St. Francis Veterans Center, _it reads across the main gate. Cicely is trying to recall any memory of that name from the file she had read on the way here, though she didn’t recall anything about it. Luca is busy setting up his transponder, opting to set it up before they went inside should anything detrimental happen to them, so she takes a few steps closer to the edge of the lake between them and the building in the hopes of getting a better look.

“It looks like someone died in there,” Luca muses, looking up briefly from the tech in his hands. He points over to the corner of the gate where old wood has been used to make an enclosure which she can’t see anything inside. Behind that is more metal railings, hastily tied together by blue rope. “We have to live here? I know I’m not too afraid of anything but… I’m scared of ghosts. Can I request a room change?”

Cicely kisses her teeth at him. “You can room change once I figure out what the hell is going on in this place.”

“I saw this pretty cool looking house on the way in. I mean, it’s no Los Santos but I’ll sacrifice that because the ladies around here most definitely have not seen anyone as attractive as _me_.”

“The _ladies _here are twice your age,” Cicely reminds him.

“The men here are twice your age, too,” Luca replies with narrowed eyes. He looks back down to carry on syncing the transponder, though his attention is stolen by the scene once more when the quiet rustle of leaves is shunned by the long, single howl from near the building. Cicely looks back to him with furrowed brows when he jumps at the sound. “That’s a wolf. Dude, this cult has wolves.”

Cicely shakes her head. “We’re in the middle of the mountains, there are probably wolves everywhere. You know what else? Bears. So don’t make loud noises like that and attract any bears, or cougars or whatever. There are probably snakes too. Just… I’ll find you a computer and then I’ll get back to the field work.”

“No fieldwork for me?” Luca asks, pout on his lips as his eyes widen.

“If this guy we’re working for says you can,” Cicely tells him, “we’re doing this one by the book. The last thing I need is a religious cult on my back too. Unless you like the arctic? We can spend a few years there as Eskimos, hm?”

Luca quietens down with a reminder that Cicely isn’t the one in charge here. He can’t help it – he’s used to the idea of doing whatever she thought was right and dealing with the consequences later. She fought for the people who contracted her and won a war for them, like she did in Indonesia, Yamatai, Kyrat, even way back when she was very first sent to Africa. Each time she outsmarted those she was against and they didn’t like that.

Usually the consequences were her enemies causing her more problems than she could count for and that was the reason she had been left _here_. A lovely, quiet, violent county in a state that she thought was in a completely part of America. Nonetheless, she couldn’t cause any problems when she was on the _bad _side and it was likely anyone who wanted to cause her problems would be dead within the year.

At least, the file that the bad guys sent Ruben said that. Dead, or part of the cult that believed they were right. Ruben believed it because of a conference call he sat in on. He told Luca and Cicely that they were in okay hands because they had devised an entire strategy and it was clearly made by someone with experience. The three of the brothers sat in on the call and discussed everything down to a T, yet none of that could be shared with Cicely.

She wasn’t allowed to know more than _the older brother runs it, the ex-army one _and that there was assurance he knew what he was doing. Which was very much likely, given his background and knowledge of the area. She was about as important as the next guy here. A bit better at aiming, if that.

Cicely and Luca head over to the Veterans Center when Luca is finished setting his stuff up, though Cicely lost track about what that actually was, around the lake which is filled with anything from fish to broken tyres. They can see all the way over to the other side of the mountains, where she recalled an airbase was. As they get closer it becomes apparent that Luca was right about the wolves; there are a few scattered inside make-shift cages inside the gates of the Center. They are quite calm, not bothering to make any noise when the pair pass by them and head to the main gates.

Fortunately, the main gates are shut where they stand, giving another opportunity for Cicely to survey the property. There are men walking around, some in old clothing and some looking more like a militia commanded by Eden’s Gate. A few have noticed their presence and are starting to talk, though a senior looking cultist begins to walk their way and starts to play with the keys in their hands.

Luca looks back to her with one last optimistic smile, mouthing ‘we got this’ as he cheers with his fist. Cicely wonders whether it’s his last for a while, though she can’t dwell on the possibility for too long as the cultist reaches them sooner than she thought.

“You here for Jacob?” He asks, holding one of the many oversized keys between his gloved fingers. He raises an eyebrow when neither answer. “I got word that two of you were coming to meet him. So you better tell me yes or you’ll not like this outcome.”

“Yeah,” Cicely answers, unsure of what else she should say. Ruben failed to give her a name. She assumed that one of the deputy leaders would be in charge of them. “We in the right place?”

He only hums, unlocking the gate for them. He shuts it immediately when they enter, locking it secure once more. A golden key with a picture of a horse on it, three prongs the middle one shorter than the two others. He points to double doors opposite to them, the left one slightly ajar. “Through there, up to the second floor. Take the door to your left and then follow the path round until you reach the end and there’s a door with blinds on it. Knock three times.”

Cicely nods at his instructions, followed by Luca bowing his head slightly out of courtesy. Cicely pulls on his arm to stop him, a subtle shake of her head to tell him that he looks out of place and it’s better to stop before they do end up with the outcome they don’t want.

They both follow the cultist’s instructions, their appearance sticking out among the cultists. They are mostly in the same tattered clothing, some with a leather jacket or vest. Luca holds the boxes of tech in his hands whilst Cicely keeps her hand over her right leg’s holster, should she need it.

A blunder of stares hits them as they start to ascend the stairs. Luca skips a few steps to catch up to Cicely, leaning closer to her in case they could be heard. “I take back what I said, I’m scared of these freaks. They look high.”

“Probably are.” Cicely agrees with him and gestures over to a vent on the far side, a faint white gas pouring through it. “There’s a hint of something in the air. Do you remember when someone kept planting bittersweet nightshade in the garden? I thought it was that, but it’s different. They’re probably all fucked off their heads.”

“Easier to kill them if they go for us then,” Luca comments, looking behind them to check no one was tailing them. He catches a glimpse of two of the militia-looking men pushing white-skinned, rag wearing man through the doors downstairs. He had a mask over his mouth, too.

He ignores the feeling deep down in his stomach and catches up to Cicely again, passing her to grab the door on the left like they were asked to. He lets her past him, into a well-lit corridor which has dull yellow walls that appear scratched.

“They love the wolves, huh?” He states, focused on a 4-claw scratch mark down the wall. Below 5 finger stain of blood, which catches him off guard. Luca shakes his head from disgust and carries on walking. “Hopefully that guy we’re meeting has some sanity left in him.”

“Jacob? I don’t know. Ruben said he was discharged for being medically unfit. You know what that means. Physical injury or mental injury. God help us if it’s one with PTSD who still needs to be a hero. _Another_Ruben.”

Luca groans loudly. “Can we just go join the rebellion against these guys already?”

“We haven’t even met them yet. Maybe you’ll get on with _the Father._”

“_Ooh_, that shit just gave me chills.” Luca stops at a picture of the very man, smashed on the floor with glass around it. Cicely stops too, noticing the air of superiority around him. Luca rolls his eyes dramatically and spits on the picture. “I listened to one of his talks and he was _very particular _about his wording regarding politics. I must say, I agree with parts of it. Fuckin’ cunts who can’t control shit and blame people for us. Probably will end up a nuclear war. Say, let’s hope they really will lead us to Eden so we survive World War three. Otherwise I’m gonna regret rejecting a job over in China.”

Cicely raises her brow. “China?”

“You know, they’re pretty tight with North Korea. I think they’d win whatever nuclear war there would be.”

“I guess you’re right,” Cicely tells him as she starts walking again. They both turn the corner and at the end she can see the door with the blinds. She distracts herself from the lingering fear in her gut. “Though I still think one of the smaller countries will be safe. Maybe Cuba? Netherlands? We could stay with your grandpa.”

Luca chuckles a little. “My grandpa would not let anyone like you into his house.”

“That’s harsh. How else am I going to survive World War three? I don’t know where you can find nuclear bunkers. Unless I _finally _kill that Cantonese cartel on my ass and go back to the Himalayas, find that bunker they had there and wait it out until your grandpa lets me in. Alternatively, I go to Yamatai and pray that Himiko saves me from nuclear dust.”

“Don’t call it nuclear dust. It made me picture you getting dusted.”

“Dusted? _Pff. _Thanos wouldn’t stand a chance against me.”

Luca stops with a look of shock on his face. His head is cocked slightly to the side as he stares her down. “You? _You_? Against an Eternal-Deviant? Get out your own ass, you are just—”

Before he can finish, glass from where they were before crunches and both Cicely and Luca jump to it. A face covered in blood meets them. It flies around the corner with a low scream following, running towards them without a care for what is in front. Luca can barely reach before a bullet is straight between the eyes of the thing.

He breathes a few shaky breaths as the man before them falls to the ground. It’s definitely human but they look bat-shit crazy. Or angry. A knife in both hands and blood everywhere. One deep breath and his heart rate is a little better, though he still looks to Cicely with wide eyes.

“Can’t kill Thanos,” she repeats, arm dropping to her side, “I’m not Scarlet Johansen or _Brie _Larson, I get the job done.”

The start of their conversation is interrupted by the door a few metres behind them creaking open. Both of them turn back to the door, Cicely bringing her arm out in front of her to aim at the door. A few seconds of darkness pass and two men walk through the door and stop a few feet later.

The first of them is younger, dark hair with a clear complexion. Unshaved but still clean, with the eyes that resembled the calm sea during the tide. He is slightly shorter, though he has tattoos across his arms and under some string around his neck, his chest is scarred with something she can’t work out. He looks unusually kind, forgiving even. He smiles sweetly despite a gun pointed at his chest.

Behind is a taller one, messy from top to bottom with a hint of _thug _over the entire appearance. He has burns over his arms, though the cause isn’t apparent, and battle scars across his visible His red hair seems tamed but not that beard, and his army attire gives him away straight away. _Bingo_.

The first man, _not-Jacob_, walks quickly away from the scene with his hands lazily swung in his pockets. As he passes between Luca and Cicely, he slows down to meet her eyes and bows his head ever so slightly towards her. She tries not to think too much about it, though from his disposition he was likely the other brother. _Did that scar say sloth?_

Cicely watches him as he disappears down the corridor and around the corner before turning back to the other. She can feel Luca’s stare on her, though Jacob is looking between the two of them with disappointment written in his eyes. Cicely finds herself more concerned that he’ll send her to those wolves and say she accidently died to get out of paying. It was a likely scenario. Act as though a small looking woman accidentally set the wolves free. It would be too easy.

Despite his apparent disdain, Jacob takes a step back and holds the door open for them both to enter. A glance is shared between Luca and Cicely, the latter taking it upon herself to enter first. She can smell the blood of the many from just walking past the brother, and once she’s past him she curses herself under her breath for ever agreeing to this.

“Sit,” Jacob tells them both, gesturing to the chairs opposite to the large wooden desk. It’s covered in a map of what appears to be Hope County, like an old-time war map in the movies. Red markings are all over the map, along with other scribbles and strings linked together.

Silence once again fills the room, the lamps in each corner being the only source of light beside the door. No windows, only files and pictures and maps. Jacob is once more staring between the two of them, and Luca only moves so that he can place the box down on the ground. It would have been a great shot for a politically motivated war movie.

“How many years experience?” Jacob asks, looking towards Cicely for an answer. He leans forward, elbows on the desk in front of him. “Between the two of you, I would say no more than five.”

Luca glances to Cicely before he clears his throats and stutters out an answer instead, “I’ve… I’ve actually got none. But five is right.”

“Five.” Jacob’s repetition of the number is a jab in Cicely’s ribs. He hums to himself, almost amused. “Five years. And what did that get you?”

Cicely remain emotionless for a moment, assessing him as best she can. A nihilistic type. No one is better than me guy. Perfect antagonist for any story. “Nothing.”

“I don’t think you’re giving me a good answer.”

“Would you rather me lie and tell you that I got more than just an unnecessary amount of broken bones and scars?” Cicely shifts in her chair so she sits a little taller. She pushes the sleeves of her jacket up to her elbows, almost matching his. “It got me nothing. At best, it taught me to never work for the government again.”

Jacob is quiet for a moment before he looks over to the door they came in. “You were trained as a marksman?”

“Not initially, but yes.”

“Are you good?”

Cicely pauses, unsure of how to answer such a question. She considers telling him yes, though it is unlike an antagonist to enjoy something good. “I take one-hundred a head. Bit more than a black market hitman.”

“Why did you leave service?”

His question is one she had hoped to avoid, though it was apparent he was going to ask it the minute he read anything about her. If she was good she wouldn’t be removed, not unless a reason could actually be given.

Her hesitation to answer is expected given the way their conversation has been going, though Luca already realises that she isn’t going to come up with an answer. He sits forward, placing both hands on the table to get Jacob’s attention. “Are we killing people for you?”

Luca seems pleased to have intervened, cocky look on his face easily broken down by Jacob’s harsh stare. The pair are locked for what feels like a few minutes, though Jacob breaks the tension with some less expected information.

“Luca Braak. You shouldn’t be here. Caught by the feds when you were seventeen for hacking a national database and threatening to release the information for some corrupt ministers. Brave move. Doing the work of the gods. What use is that in a place that renounces technology?”

“There are cameras all over the mountains.”

Jacob looks across to Cicely, narrowing his eyes slightly for her interruption. “Okay.”

“They’d be useful to find out what’s going on out there without wasting men,” Cicely tells him, shuffling towards the table and pointing directly at the mountains, all the way down to the river in the middle. He follows her with caution. Her chipped black nail polish is no different to the dusty map. “There’s a camera which is in that base you’ve been chasing for a while, which is useful. Right?”

“I can get it for you now?” Luca continues, picking up one of the boxes. He pulls out a tablet, unlocking the screen and handing it over to Jacob.

Cicely watches the brother look over each of the cameras with interest. She resists a feeling of victory and instead crosses her arms over her chest, sitting back and allowing the situation to resolve itself. “Fifty-two cameras at your disposal north of the river.”

“The joint server can’t be traced and the signal will be fine as long as that radio tower over at the base is still, you know, intact.” Luca offers a smile, pleased with his own work. He’s quiet for a moment as Jacob entertains himself, only a subtle _ah! _when he realises that he’s left something. He pulls a wire from the box and leaves it on the table. “We got a charger for it, too. Should you need to use it a lot, which you will.”

Much to her surprise, the _gift _they prepared as a very last resort situation had somehow worked. Not that one of these antagonist types would ever be happy with anything, but Jacob at the very least seemed to enjoy a new found ability to be able to track whatever he wanted. At least, his silence could bring both Luca and Cicely to believe that he wouldn’t kill them as of yet.

It’s an uncomfortable to wait for Jacob to confirm that, nonetheless. “You start guard tomorrow.”

“What are we doing?” Cicely asks him.

“Guard, do I need to explain it?” Jacob returns. He looks to Luca with a thoughtful eye. “Not you. I have something else for you. Come back here tomorrow at eight.”

Luca, though unsure of what the job Jacob has picked specifically for _him _could really entail, doesn’t do more than nod in agreement. He keeps his head down as Jacob stands and opens the door for them both, cue for them to leave him before they did start something they didn’t want.

So they leave without a question for him, preferring to not poke the bear any further. A silent walk back down the stairs and into the courtyard leaves them both unsure of where to go and concerned for their surroundings. They briefly saw the state of things before they went in but the true sight is enough to make Cicely thankful that she skipped lunch before she came here.

There are men locked in cages with their eyes scratched, body malnourished and barely audible pleas being ignored by what guards tended to them. Some of them are being dragged around by the cultists, forced into vans and taken elsewhere. The wolves are being painted, prepared for whatever was to come.

Even the air has an indescribable taste to it. Not just blood, or that god-awful nightshade which lingered in each breath. There was the smell of burnt flesh and sleepless nights; hunger and hot metal. It somehow is worse than either of them could have ever pictured here.

“You new?”

Cicely turns to where the voice came from, the refreshing sound of a feminine touch surprising her a little. She meets the gaze of a lady, stood just behind them leaning against a stack of ammo crates. The lady bites into an apple, nodding at the two of them.

“I’m on contract here,” she says, chucking the apple core to the side. Her accent is faded, Cicely can identify it as one that may have come from the Jamacia but has slowly been changed into a mid-west accent, suiting her attire which tells a story of an American. Jacket from the marine corps, badges on the crest though it’s lazily thrown over a black vest top and matching pants. Her hair is braided, skin tanned to a deep bronze by the sun. “Judging by looks you’re giving this place, so are you.”

Cicely, though weary, nods as an answer to her question. “Where do we sleep around here?”

“Sleep? You don’t get it,” she tells them, “those wolves _never _shut up. Go down to the nearest store and get yourself some earplugs ‘cause you ain’t ever gonna catch a good night’s sleep without. There are some beds inside though. Follow.”

The lady starts to head in the direction of the building again, this time over to one of the entrances on the side. Cicely shrugs at Luca, deciding to follow the lady in the hopes that she could trust a uniform like that. It’s all more of the same where she takes them, a long corridor with faded paint and words on the walls, smashed pictures replaced with new ones, and most often a splatter of blood to give an elegant touch.

She leads them to a medium-sized room which is full of camp beds, a little space to each side of them and a small locked trunk at the end of each bed for some items to be left in. A few of the beds appear to be occupied, though the majority aren’t.

“Lucky you can when you did, the last of us thought we wouldn’t get anyone new.”

“You’re all hired in here?”

She nods. “We got a special room ‘cause we got some special training. Lucky for us we don’t gotta sit with the lunatics out there and let our minds fade away too. More than an hour with any of them really does fuck your mind up.”

“Are they on drugs?” Luca asks, pointing out of one of the windows which showed a group of men standing together.

“Yeah, though that don’t mean they have any less abilities than you and I. Whatever they’re coked up on, it makes them reckless and I’m sure they would be happy to pull a gun on you for anything which they deem to be non-God lovin’. I’m Serena. Nice to meet you both, I’m sure we’ll be spending a lot of time together here.”

Luca reaches his hand out for Serena to shake, though she only shoots it down with a frown. He opts for putting his hands in his pockets instead. “Luca.”

“Cicely.”

“Everyone who’s been here has been old enough to be both of your parents. How’d you get here?”

“We got access to those cameras across the mountains and also had special ops training,” Luca answers, his sentence pulled from a conversation that it seems he’s already had, “or, you know, the equivalent of.”

Serena’s eyes widen a little. Cicely doesn’t expect her to do this. “Mountain cameras… Damn, you guys are gonna make Jacob happy. You know how much he hates Eli?”

“Who’s Eli?” Cicely asks.

“God, if you didn’t get a story about him already you’re lucky. Eli Palmer leads the Whitetail Militia, biggest threat to Jacob up here though unlikely to ever cause problems. They’re the resistance here, and if we have eyes on those cameras we’re a big step ahead of everything.”

Cicely finds herself grateful that she stopped to think about the path ahead and read a little into what was going on. One simple scan and Luca could trace all those cameras. It took barely even forty minutes to get the signal to all of them highjacked and straight onto a tablet for anyone here to access.

It only brings her concerns that everyone here is illiterate when it came to technology. Sure, there barely seemed to be anything beside landlines and when she _did _decide to check her phone on the way here, there was one bar of signal every ten miles. She had read somewhere that they didn’t like the use of technology and that was enough for Cicely to believe that implementing something as straightforward as a tracker would mean that they were a hell of a lot further forward in the race to win this county.

Perhaps Jacob has had a similar idea and that was why he wanted Luca to do something other than guard people. It hurt Cicely deep down, though she knew not to take it personally. She was more than someone to keep watch. Her aim may have been her best asset but it was more than fair to say her mind was too.

She was a mindless monkey just like the cultists, being used for man-power when she could be a true strategist and win for them. Though, Jacob seemed like he had more experience than anyone she knew, apart from Ruben. He knew what he was doing, and he knew what this place was about. His job must have been tough, given the possibilities he had to choose from.

Maybe they needed a fresh face in the place – that’s how hospitals pass inspections and schools keep their students.

“Either of you happy to cover the graveyard shift?” Serena asks. She’s now over on the bed opposite to Luca, sifting through a bag until she pulls out a pistol. Their lack of response makes her change her words. “Who wants to guard through the night?”

Cicely drops her bag onto the bed next to Luca’s. “I’ll do it. What time and where?”

“Go up to the roof at eleven. Take one of the rifles and don’t fall asleep, will ya? No one needs to rat on someone and get them killed. Especially around here. You don’t just get killed, you get tortured.”

“This may seem like a stupid question but… why has no one stopped any of this yet?” Luca questions, pulling his clothes from his backpack. He throws them into the trunk at the end. “This whole place is so fucked up, yet no one has come here and done shit about it. It makes no sense.”

“Nothing makes any sense here, boy. You’ll learn that too. I’ll see ya both around. My only advice is stay out of anyone’s way unless you want to end up like them.”

Without another word, Serena leaves out the same door they entered. She doesn’t give them a chance for any more questions, and Cicely wonders whether that’s because they would only cause her problems by asking more.

Luca, though the one with the most questions, still seems content. He’s organising his things into piles in the trunk whilst Cicely is the one sussing the environment. There’s something she doesn’t like about the place, though she couldn’t put her finger straight on it.

So like she used to, she investigates. She should have been more trusting and just waited until later to ask someone, but that was far less rewarding. Instead, she finds herself over at the beds that are occupied, hairpin between her fingers as she _tries _to unpick the lock which likely holds some secrets she wants to know.

“Are you sure you should be doing that?” Luca asks, voice raised a little.

“Shut up and keep watch, I’m making sure this isn’t a set up,” she tells her, pointing over to the open door. Once she hears Luca’s footsteps go in the same direction, she goes back to the lock. Luckily, it looks cheap and old. “Don’t you think she was a bit strange?”

Luca hums with a little discretion. “She was former marines. Those guys are all strange.”

“Wasn’t that. One of my commanders in the Ukraine always told me to watch out for people who seem to not have any conscious. All we’ve said since we got here is how fucked this place is and she’s happy to have us tortured if we accidentally fall asleep at night, and we’re on the same side? I think she’s a little too involved.”

“Who wouldn’t be in a place like this? She’s probably seen so much shit she can’t ever get away from it. It’s like… those people who’ve joined this cult cause they don’t think there’s any other way out.”

Cicely manages to get the lock open with a few twists, tossing it onto the bed as she opens up the trunk and peeks inside with a hint of caution. “This is America. They can just leave and go to another state. It’s not hard.”

The trunk, to her dismay, is mostly empty. There are some spare clothes, a broken handgun and a phone that has a bullet hole in the middle. Cicely groans, pulling the trunk shut again and replacing the lock. She looks over to the other two beds which are occupied and sighs.

“Was there anything in there?” Luca asks.

“Just clothes and broken stuff,” she replies, “I don’t even know if it’s worth checking the other two.”

“Why don’t we go and have a look around the area and find some food? I’m a great fisher.”

Seeing it as her only option, Cicely agrees and prepares to leave once again. She can’t argue about it, her suspicions of people around here will have to remain until she finds something over than the weapons that _everyone _here is using. It’s frustrating to be wrong, though more annoying than anything that she can’t have a head start on finding out what will actually go down here in the end.

Even when she passes through the courtyard once more, nothing around her is as it seems. Part of her believes that should she ever come through here in the middle of the day without Luca with her, she would have been hounded by the men around her. He was 6’2, and though he may not have been the biggest build he still was enough to scare some people off when he was wearing his (stolen) military uniform that KCT would wear. Her 5’7 frame was tiny next to him no matter what she did, even when she carried a TAC-50 in her arms.

She felt intimidated, yes. Not for the fact that she was overwhelmed, or that there was too many of them. She knew that she was better in combat than the majority of people here. There was something different about the men and women around her who would die for the man who they called father. They had loyalty. All she had was herself and Luca. At the click of one of the Seed’s fingers they could be as good as done.

As they are walking through the courtyard, Luca talking about all the different fish he had caught across Europe and how he would be recording everything he came across today, she notices a familiar stare from across the tarmac. She only has to shift her eyes slightly to see the two brothers standing together, by the side of a cage with a wolf inside, to notice that it was the older who’s attention she had caught.

She only keeps his gaze for a second, though her expression never changes despite the deep fear seated inside of her. A moment of staring and the other brother is looking over to her as well, though it’s something different with him. It’s not curiosity like she saw with Jacob.

Jacob was, without a doubt, messed up. But he was smart. He may have come to realise what kind of assets that Luca and Cicely would have been to Eden’s Gate. He may have wondered why a surveillance operant was carrying a sniper rifle, or why an untrained hacker was wearing Dutch Special Forces uniform.

The younger reeked of sadism. Not an antagonist type, a tie you up and make you beg type. _Against your will you will follow me _guy. The blue shirt and black vest was a self-obsessed cry for attention, too. She was sure she read somewhere that he used to be a lawyer. If not, she was just giving an exact guess; the youngest Seed brother was looking at her like he _owned _her.

Cicely looks back to Luca when she shivers from her thoughts, though she knows they are both still looking. She could feel the stare on them all the way into the trees, heading down towards the Salmon lake that was pointed out on a map in the room they were staying in.

Cicely doesn’t dare to look behind her the entire way down there in case she sees either of them again and is left with a night full of unwanted thoughts. She tries to focus on her conversation with Luca though he soon realises that she’s concerned and he pipes down in an effort to let her concentrate on whatever it might be. Nonetheless, the arrive down at the lake without anyone on their trail and Cicely starts to think that the Seeds had induced a spell of paranoia on her.

Luca manages to find a fishing rod in the small shed near the wooden dock. He sits on the edge, feet hanging off the edge of the dock whilst Cicely sits on the edge of a tree stump and attempts to start a fire in a pit that was full of blackened wood. It takes a while, given that the last time she had to make a fire like this was two years ago in Yamatai.

“You know, it _is _really pretty out here,” Luca states, bringing Cicely’s attention away from the fire just as she started to bring the flame to light. She lets out an exasperated breath when the flame goes out, turning to Luca with tired eyes. “I would live here. Get myself an old guitar, teach my kids the farming lifestyle. You could tame some of the animals around here. Fuck Ruben, when we finish this let’s just stick around.”

Cicely hums as she picks up some dried leaves and grass again. “It won’t be pretty when the cult start taking every and we’re on their side. Have you seen that statue of the Father?”

Luca looks up to the other side of the sky he was admiring and sees the statue that Cicely is referring to, pure white and taking up the entire view. He curses under his breath briefly before going back to the fish.

“I know it’s stupid, but I don’t think they’ll win whatever war is going on here,” Cicely tells Luca, not before checking to see no one was around. She finally manages to get the leaves alight, so starts the fire and then heads over to sit next to him. “You know, I got that feeling like I did in Yamatai when you thought we were doomed. When I told you to shut up, because I knew a way up to the monastery. Those cultists may be ahead now, but not forever.”

“Especially now you’re here, huh? You’ll get sick of the cult and join the resistance, and I’ll have to come with you, and we’ll sort this whole place out.”

“Hey, if we’re not going back to Ruben then it seems like a pretty decent plan. I can always just leave you to the Seeds on your own and take you out last.”

Luca rolls his eyes. “I’d come with you, you don’t need to worry about that. I just think we would never be allowed. I’m sure _the Father _already has shit to say about you and me now we’re here. _Luca and Cicely, the chosen ones, they will destroy this entire place! _Fuck that shit man, I just wanna get paid. I’m scared that if I don’t earn Ruben some money he’ll send me back to my grandpa and I’ll have to pull a _Frank Abagnale _and start working for the feds.”

“If we’re going to fit in here, we’re going to have to stop making pop-culture references,” Cicely reminds him, “nothing more than hired, expensive help. Pay our dues and get out. Don’t start making Jacob go to bed at night wondering what you meant when you quote The Elder Scrolls.”

“You mean I can’t call him Ulfric Stormcloak’s less admirable cousin despite how true it is?”

Cicely stifles a laugh but shakes her head. “I don’t want you to even refer to a situation as something. No _Black Ops _moments. Don’t even tell anyone about final kill cam. Especially Jacob.”

“I’m going to ignore the fact you’re ignoring that they are related because of their love for wolves, and being tyrannical madmen, based on the fact you are right.” Luca points over to the statute of the Father before continuing. “But doesn’t he remind you of a new-age pyramid head or something? Or Sullivan Knoth? I could totally see them two and the Seeds on some mental asylum together.”

Cicely chooses to ignore his comment, opting to look down into the water below. There’s an abundance of fish, and below the surface is greenery that she’s never seen before. Luca was definitely right about how beautiful this place is, if anything.

Her thoughts are once again interrupted by Luca’s ramblings, which she narrows her eyes at him for. “I think it’s also fair to say that I won’t be the one keeping him awake at night.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that Jacob will rather be thinking about you,” Luca repeats, “you’re a better sight for him. He’s an army guy. You know they’re attracted to the _yes we can _type of girl. He probably saw you with a sniper earlier and, you know, if he can…”

Cicely jabs Luca’s shoulder but laughs regardless. “He wasn’t discharged for not being able to get it up, idiot.”

“I don’t know what he can and can’t do! For all I know he was just like Doctor Wernicke, I’m just saying he probably finds you hot and that is a fact. He hasn’t seen a girl without mud and blood all over her since he was like twenty. It’s been a long time for him.”

“You’re really asking for us to get shot point-blank, aren’t you?”

“I just say it how it is,” Luca tells her, pulling the fishing rod back in an attempt to reel in the fish. He stops for a moment to concentrate on catching the fish, catching a medium-size one on his first attempt. He lays it down in the white box next to him with a triumphant grin. “And to think you brought that sniper all the way down here for deer just in case I couldn’t get anything.”

Luckily for her, there’s no more talk of pop-culture references or the brothers she was starting to regret meeting. As the sunset and the night started to fall over them, Cicely and Luca find themselves discussing further tactics for the area with a map that was left on the table at the shed. Since she spent so much time in Kyrat with locals, she knew how to skin the fish and somehow they managed to enjoy their last few hours being truly free without a Seed brother dictating what they could and couldn’t do.

And it was nice for her to spend it with Luca, since she was the last person she had left who she cared about. The feeling of that changing was looming over her, the thought of losing him to this cult did scare her like no other; but she told herself for his sake that she had nothing to fear.

Nothing, apart from the brothers and what they would do to _her_.

It was as if each time she saw one of them, there was a stronger feeling of helplessness attaching itself to her. By the time she saw one of them for the third time, be it Jacob standing by the door when she left Luca to head up to the roof like she was asked, it was as if she was just one of the names on a list he had crumpled in his hand.

She knew he watched her go up to the roof and she knew her suspicions of her grew each time she touched something that belonged to him. If only she had reconsidered that it was suspicion. 


	4. the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’ve been around,” Jacob states. He moves closer to her, reaching out to touch her arm. His thumb moves slowly down each of the flags until he reaches the bottom. “Seen some things, I’m sure.”
> 
> “I got chased around a forgotten island off the coast of Japan by some maniacs who thought the Sun Queen still existed. They dressed up as ancient Japanese warriors and carried around swords. I don’t think anything will be stranger than that place.”
> 
> “You’re in a place where a man talks to God,” Jacob states. He runs his thumb over the tattoo of the Siberian flag, the pad of his thumb rough compared to her own skin. He keeps his hand on her as he meets her eyes once more. “I’m sure you’ve seen some shit out there, but don’t underestimate this place. It doesn’t matter who you are, whether you’re on this side or not. Anything my brother says to them, they listen to. Don’t matter what they’re dressin’ up like.”
> 
> Cicely tries to hide her frown behind confusion. “You don’t sound too sure of your brother.”
> 
> “I don’t know if he talks to God, what I do know is that he has an army waiting to follow him. These men say they are loyal to me but if it came to it, they wouldn’t listen to me over him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the delayed update, I'm currently also in the middle of doing my dissertation so kinda have to split my time evenly. this is more of a filler chapter cause I needed to add more about oc and jacob and begin to form some relationships. little bit more drama coming in the next one!

_Do not love the world not the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. -**1 John 2:15-16**_

Cicely stares up to the stars above, the sky so clear that even the furthest of them are visible to her. The white flickers from purple, to blue and to red. She remembers when she was a girl, her father would take her outside and point at each one, tell her what constellation they were part of and occasionally find one of the satellites or space stations.

You could have seen anything you wanted from here. She’d never had a view like this, not even in the middle of the sea from Yamatai to Japan, nor the middle of the Kyrati planes where no one dared to step foot. The closest that came to it was the prison in the Himalayas that they had her locked up in, though that was never perfect due to the snow.

She makes a note of the constellation in front of her in the black notepad she carried around with her, naming each of the stars like her father once taught her to. She circles the brightest star, _Hamal_, and writes what she remembers next to it.

Naming the stars was her only touch with reality around here. She was with people, though they were far from acting like such and there was no chance that she would have ever made a day without grounding herself with memories of her father’s voice. It was the only thing she could really remember about him now, with all the time passing since his death.

Two weeks of sitting on the roof of the Veterans Center, watching out over the fields to make sure none of the resistance tried a surprise attack. It was pointless her being here – the most anyone had tried to do was throw a grenade into the lake, thinking it was a better way to fish. No one had tried to charged on this place. No one was going to come right to Jacob’s feet and try to shoot at his knees.

“In all these years, I have never had anyone _volunteer _for sittin’ up here all night.”

Cicely turns to the voice, surprised to have another person awake with her. When she sees the shadowed face of the oldest Seed brother, she shuts the book in her hands and sits with her back a little straighter. She made it to be around 4am; there was no reason for him to be here. There’s an immediate worry that someone thought she wasn’t looking out properly.

Jacob grabs one of the chairs that’s facing the opposite direction and drags it over to sit a few feet from her. He lays his rifle up against the wall, similar to how hers is. “There a reason you’re avoiding seeing people?”

“No,” she answers, avoiding his eyes for as long as she can before it’s considered rude, “I just think it’s peaceful at night.”

Jacob scoffs. “For the dead, maybe.”

“Do you not think it’s peaceful right now?” Cicely asks, looking back over to the scene before them. Right down to the roads ahead, looking across to the mountains without anything to disrupt the picture.

“It’s quiet. I don’t like that,” he replies. He follows her gaze onto the mountains and continues to look over them for a moment as well. Once he’s had enough, he looks back to her sheepishly. There’s some hesitation in his voice when he speaks. “You got a reason to like the night so much?”

Cicely shakes her head, hiding the book under her arm by shifting her position. “Maybe something like what you said, not seeing anyone for almost half the day. Everyone leaves you alone.”

“That don’t happen in places like this. Everyone knows everyone and everything. You want to do anything, the whole place finds out about it. No one in this county minds their business. You come up here wantin’ some air and the whole place thinks you got a secret.”

“Guess it’s lucky that I’m not from here then,” Cicely says softly, reaching for the rifle. She places it beside her before crossing her arms over her lap once again.

“Same with me,” Jacob replies. He gestures to her lap, obviously noticing her book from before. “So we can keep each other’s secrets and not tell them to everyone in this goddamn county. What were you doing?”

Cicely clenches her jaw, deciding whether she should make up a story or just be honest with him. She’d done both before. She’d elaborated an entire story about how and why she got to where she was, and when they found out it was a lie she was never trusted again. When she told them everything she was considered to be someone she wasn’t. She hoped it would be different.

“When I was younger my dad taught me how to read the stars. I was making a note of the ones here right now.”

Jacob’s eyebrow raises slightly as he looks over to the night sky, observing the stars like she did before. “Astronomer?”

“Astrophysicist,” she corrects him, “he worked for… before he died he worked for the UK space agency.”

“He died recently?”

Cicely shakes her head. “I was, like, nine or ten. I don’t remember much of him, mostly now it’s him lecturing me that the star I pointed at wasn’t a star, it was a space station. I’d probably be the same though if I dedicated my life to stars.”

“Must have been an interesting job though. When I was younger I liked imagining all kinds of things that were up there. Dream kinda faded when I found you needed to get a PhD to get anywhere near space.”

“Or just be really good at what you were doing,” Cicely tells him. She pulls her book out from under her arm, flicking to one of the first pages, “he was pulled in by the British at the end of the cold war. Used to work for the Soviets. God knows what he was doing over there. All he left was this book, and he told me to never learn Russian.”

Jacob eyes the book curiously, though Cicely doesn’t mind passing it over to him when she notices. She has it open on a page which has some scribbles in Russian across the lines, as well as some sketches of what she assumed to be a satellite. He takes it from her carefully, running his fingers over the pages as he looks through.

“I like it at night time because it gives me a chance to remember when my life wasn’t one big mess,” Cicely tells him openly. She wonders if she’s sharing too much, but she considers that a personal touch could get her in a better position. Oh, she’s not wrong.

“Why’d you join the army?” Jacob asks, stopping on one of the pages towards the end that she had recently been drawing on. He looks up to the sky, to check the similarity if anything, before turning back to her with inquisitive eyes once more. “I know you’re smart. You could have been working on some space stuff too.”

Cicely isn’t surprised he’s read up on her, seeing as she was a paid mercenary that could easily double back on her promise to him and kill this cult if she got to the chance. “Some guy approached me in the street when I was seventeen and asked if I wanted to join. It interested me more than being stuck behind a desk for the rest of my life. I wanted to be a part of something important, you know?”

“Just being part of something important?”

Cicely can see the training he’s had sticking out like a sore thumb. She remembers being in the room where they sat her down and tested her for the sharing of information, checked she wouldn’t sell her employers out. She remembers then being forced to be on the other side of the desk and doing the same thing for another person.

He did that too, she thinks. The badge on his jacket, _airborne 82_, it was something a bit more than a regular squadron. It’s unsurprising that he questions her motivations when you build his backstory as someone from the same crop as her. She’d have done the same thing.

“Revenge,” Cicely tells him, “part of me thought that killing those who were a threat to what I knew would make me feel like life was better.”

Jacob keeps his eyes on her for a moment before he goes back to the book he holds. She can see him read over the pages before he flicks back to the front and double checks the name that the book belongs to. “I feel like you’re hinting at a whole lot’a story here but not telling me anything.”

“It’s a _really _long story.”

“In case you didn’t notice, you and I are the only ones here for a long time,” Jacob tells her. He closes her book but keeps it on his lap. His hand lingers over it for longer than needed. “I was told it’s good to share your story. I’m game if you are.”

“Who told you that?” Cicely asks.

“Some therapist. Never really tried it out before. A lot of people talk to you here, but no one actually talks with you, not unless you’re their family. So, I burnt down my foster parents house and people told me I was a good leader. Your turn.”

Cicely tries to hide her surprise at his comments, unsure why he was admitting to her of his past. Perhaps he was employing her own tactics, or she was looking too far into it and he was trying to make conversation. If he was anything like that younger brother of his, then he would have worn his _sins _on his sleeve for everyone to see anyway.

To burn his foster parent’s house down though… there must have been more to it than just _burning it down_. Sure, she’d done some messed up shit before but there has to be a story to why he would do something like that. For the first time, she’s intrigued behind _why _one of the Seeds are doing this. Maybe there is more than meets the eye.

“My parents were killed when I was younger by… by _someone_,” Cicely tells him, “I guess I thought if I joined the army I would make sure that wouldn’t happen again. They never told me anything about it. I just remember my dad telling me to take that book and hide it.”

“So you think it was planned?” Jacob asks.

Cicely hums, bitter taste in her mouth. “I tried to tell myself not to hate him for getting them both killed but it never worked. So I went against everything he wanted for me too. I’m sure each time I pick up a knife he’s turning in his grave ready to send another spell of bad luck my way.”

“Why’d you leave?”

Cicely raises her eyebrows in response. “The army?”

“You’re too young to retire. Gotta be a story behind that too.”

“There is, not sure it’s that interesting though,” Cicely tells him honestly. A gust of wind blows around them and she pulls her coat closer to her chest. “Some doctor deemed me without capacity to make decisions suitable to my position. It wasn’t meant to be that way. Pretty sure that they made a lot of shit up to get me out of there.”

Admitting a thought she’d kept to herself this entire time was a weight off her chest she didn’t know was there. When she met Ruben for the first time, she didn’t tell him directly that she thought that it was a set up. It wasn’t something you told someone, especially it wasn’t something that she told someone who never had been part of the military before.

There was nothing trusting about Jacob though. Nothing more than she could just say it to him. “That’s tough, them stopping you from doing what you wanted this whole time.”

“I was more pissed at first, but I found that doing this was just as rewarding. Satisfied my need to find a foot to stand on and help someone out. In the end it did what I told you when we met, stopped –”

“—stopped you wanting to work for the government again. I remember. Makes more sense now than it did when you told me before. If one of my brothers asks, you learnt how to kill someone. They’ll take that a bit better.”

“I’ll remember to be a bit less honest,” Cicely states, leaning back in her chair, “why’d you leave?”

Jacob looks over to her with a blank expression. He takes one deep breath whilst staring her straight in the eyes, before he goes back to the book again. He finds a page with a map of the stars which he looks over for a while. His finger follows the path of one star until he reaches the North star right in the middle.

He stops after a while, closing the book and passing it back to her with a sigh. His eyes a bit duller, despite the moonlight shining on them. “Same as you. Some story about being unfit for duty when I was fine.”

Unsure whether to proceed with any questions, Cicely doesn’t press any further. She could establish that he was a guy with more than a few issues. Truthfully, she would have liked to go to the top of the mountains tomorrow before she had to come up here to guard, right to the spot where her and Luca managed to find some signal, just to do some research on it. Luckily Ruben had his contacts in the right places and she could get information on just about anyone. Now she knew who Jacob was and what he looked like, that would be a hell of a lot easier.

She goes back to what she was doing before, sketching out a memory of her dad pointing up to the coloured dots in the sky and telling her exact what they mean. She can picture where each of the planets are, from this exact spot on the other side of the Atlantic. He would question her on how long it takes for the planets to do a full orbit, how many they would spin, anything he could remember telling her from his work.

Even once she vaguely remembers him explaining to her how he planned on getting someone to Mars. Not that any of the old-people words stuck with her small mind, she just remembers him pointing up there and telling her quite clearly that _one day, sweetheart, we’ll be living up there_. Sure as hell she wished she could live up there. She was right about him turning in his grave. Talking to someone like Jacob Seed might just be the turning point for when he gave up haunting her and went to whatever hell he believed in.

“If you enlisted after you finished school, and you only have 5 years service, there’s another gap of five years,” Jacob states, turning the conversation back to her. Despite all of her efforts to convince herself that he was only using this opportunity to survey her, Cicely hasn’t had anyone ask her so many questions in a long time. She truly had become a ghost. “You been doin’ this for five years?”

Cicely hums. She pops the button of her jacket, pulling down the sleeve to expose her forearm with ink down it. There’s 9 different flags down her arm, each of them in a rectangle no bigger than an inch wide and half high. “Just missing the American flag. Didn’t get a chance to do it before I came.”

“You’ve been around,” Jacob states. He moves closer to her, reaching out to touch her arm. His thumb moves slowly down each of the flags until he reaches the bottom. “Seen some things, I’m sure.”

“I got chased around a forgotten island off the coast of Japan by some maniacs who thought the _Sun Queen _still existed. They dressed up as ancient Japanese warriors and carried around swords. I don’t think anything will be stranger than that place.”

“You’re in a place where a man talks to God,” Jacob states. He runs his thumb over the tattoo of the Siberian flag, the pad of his thumb rough compared to her own skin. He keeps his hand on her as he meets her eyes once more. “I’m sure you’ve seen some shit out there, but don’t underestimate this place. It doesn’t matter who you are, whether you’re on this side or not. Anything my brother says to them, they listen to. Don’t matter what they’re dressin’ up like.”

Cicely tries to hide her frown behind confusion. “You don’t sound too sure of your brother.”

“I don’t know if he talks to God, what I do know is that he has an army waiting to follow him. These men say they are loyal to me but if it came to it, they wouldn’t listen to me over him.”

“You’re their commander. If they knew anything of loyalty they’d follow you.”

Jacob shakes his head, taking his hand away from her arm. He slumps back in his chair and pulls his water carrier from beside him. He takes a swig before resting it on his thigh. “You don’t know this place. The only ones that are loyal to each other are on the other side of this fight. I don’t think that’s somethin’ I can change around here now.”

Cicely can only see the shadow of a man who once was for a moment, the moonlight revealing the true man he was inside. She sees a man who isn’t happy with what he is now, though somehow he learnt to work with it in every way. He was making his way through the world with what he had and she could only respect him for that. She can only curse herself now for being so easily swayed from one conversation.

But she tells herself that she needs an ally, and so did Luca. She could start from the very top and work her way down.

“As far as I see it, you’re the person who I follow,” Cicely states, pushing her book back inside one of the pockets she had on her trousers. Her rifle is back in her hands, barrel resting on the roof’s wall. “I don’t know your brother, and I have no reason to follow what he says. So whatever you tell me to do, I’ll do it. I don’t even know your brother’s name.”

Jacob denies her an answer, opting to give her his silence as he follows her suit and picks up his rifle, too. After a few seconds of stillness he stands, looking around the pair of them into the emptiness. He turns back to her, nodding slowly at her previous statement. “Yeah. It’s gonna stay that way.”

Though his statement is ominous, by the time that the sun rises and Cicely is ready to go back to her bed and let another few hours pass by, her encounter with Jacob is centred only on what he told her about his past. As she walks down the stairs at the back of the building, rifle in hand, her mind drifts to another place to try and piece everything together.

She knew he burnt down his foster parent’s house from their previous discussion. From information she got out of Ruben before he completely shut her out, Jacob joined the army before he was twenty. He was in the 82ndairborne devision, confirmed by his jacket, and was discharged due to being medically unfit around 1991 (date confirmed by Ruben).

He saw someone, as he said, though she couldn’t be sure if that meant he was subject to being an inpatient or whether he just saw someone occasionally on return from duty. She was sure she read that this _cult _started in Georgia too, and since his brother created the cult, it would mean that he had to be in Georgia too for a period of time. Assuming he was from Montana of course, though Cicely didn’t know enough to make judgement.

Though tired, part of her did still want to go into the mountains and get some of the phone signal she desired to search further into it with some of Ruben’s logins that he trusted her so dearly with.

Alternatively, she just asked around for information. Like he said, everyone loved to talk. In the same sense if she asked one person and it took her to others, they would have a field day with rumours about her and Jacob and_why the rookie was asking about the lieutenant_. It wasn’t a situation she wanted to get herself stuck in.

So she could try to find a computer. She heard from Luca, who was stuck trying to hack every signal and service he could (at least, that’s what he told her, though she thought it was a cover for what really was happening), that a few places had some computers nearby. She could try some abandoned houses though Joseph sent people to destroy all means of contact to the outside world. There was working computers at the Ranger Station, and a couple of the lodges that were housing Jacob’s soldiers.

She sighs to herself, knowing that she would likely have to go for the latter and work her way to the ranger station after she woke up later. It would be a trek, she could ask to catch a ride with someone or get a quadbike should one be left around. It was past where the wolves were being trained, and it took her a long time to get there when she first tried.

Deciding to sleep on it, Cicely heads straight for the doors that lead down to where she slept during the day. She doesn’t stop to say hello to Luca, tiredness hitting her harder than she expected it to. Her eyes are almost dropping shut as she descends the stairs and turns the corner to the side of the building she needed.

Her mind is so tired that she almost misses the two figures watching her from the other side of the court. _Almost. _She might have missed the stare from Jacob but there was not a chance that every one of her senses was set off by the younger brother. John is watching her with a stereotypical smirk on his lips.

She decides to ignore it, pay no attention and not even bother to meet his eyes. She reaches her bed and flops down onto the hard cushion without a care for what is going on around her. She was the only one in the room and likely would be for a while. The very last thought on her mind before she drifts into unconsciousness is what Jacob said to her about his past, and how she would _need _to get to a computer as soon as she could to find out more.

He’s in her dream, too.

She’s sat outside, back at her childhood home. Sitting under the stars on the balcony of the apartment near to Canary Wharf in the heart of London. Cars are all around her, people talking on the still busy streets as the wind blows softly over her body.

She feels a shiver go down her spine and she shakes to correspond the feeling, eyes falling shut for a moment as she hums. As she opens her eyes, she feels a jacket wrapped around her shoulders which she pulls across her chest too. She looks to her right, expecting her father to be sitting across from her with a map of the stars but he’s not there. She has the map of the stars in front of her.

Next to her is Jacob, no different to how he looks now except he appears to be relieved. No anger in his eyes and worry for the future. No impending doom resting on his shoulders forcing him to follow what his psycho brother tells him to do.

Just as she thinks they’re going to talk to each other, when she _really _thinks she will learn some more about Jacob like she so badly wanted to, the door behind them that leads back into the apartment slams shut and she turns to see who the culprit is.

Her eyes only widen as a she jumps up from her bed in a cold sweat. It wasn’t a nightmare, far from it, yet her heart is racing and she can’t seem to put a reason towards it. She’s immediately reminded of the face she saw in the doorway and the thought doesn’t go away when she looks up and sees the _same_person standing at the side of her bed.

“I’m John,” he says to her, sitting across from her. He has a smile on his lips though nothing about him screams approachability. She would rather run for the hills. “What’s your name?”

_God_it sounded like a conversation pulled straight out of a _how to lie _textbook. She didn’t feel it was best to lie to him, though. “It’s Cicely.”

“Like the country? That’s a pretty name. Not heard that one before.”

“Like the flower,” she answers. She can’t remember where she put her handgun before she slept, but she was sure it must have been somewhere near her pillow. She tries to get her hand as close to the pillow without attracting any attention to herself. “It’s an old name, I think around the Victorian era. I was named after my grandmother.”

“I’m sure she was lovely; as lovely as you.”

Cicely hums softly, fingers reaching the casing of the handgun and bringing her some relief. Her eyes move to the door which they can leave out of, which now has two men posted at it. One catches her gaze and pulls the door shut.

She only sees it fit to play along with whatever John has going on. She keeps her hand ready to pull the gun though, offering a smile to him in return for his conversation. “How can I help you, John?”

“My brother speaks highly of you, and I need someone that I can trust to get me some work done,” John says, leaning in closer. He pulls a picture of a man from his jacket pocket and hands it to her. “I’ve been told you’re a marksman.”

“You need someone dead?”

John nods twice. “At the earliest convenience.”

“Jacob has—”

“I have asked Jacob who has released you of your duties tonight,” John tells her. He gives her the picture, followed by a map he pulls from his pocket too. “Find him hanging around the south entrance to the national park. Been leading a group of the resistance and blocking the entrance to Holland Valley. I’d appreciate if he was taken out. Radio me when you’re done and I will arrange transport.”

Cicely would have turned it down, knowing that working for John as well would leave her with a second distribution line which she did _not _want to be part of. She also knows that it isn’t an opinion to her, and that refusing it may end with her in front of the person they all look up to. _The Father. _Luca had somehow been able to bring up a total of 29 videogames so far that the title seemed to be ripped straight from.

_An antagonist_, Luca would tell her, _he’s literally the person you would have a final boss battle with and would kill you like forty times before you even know what his weakness is_.

He was definitely an antagonist, but that meant that his siblings were too. Jacob included.

So she accepts the job and stuffs the picture into her pocket, agreeing to meet with John in an hour so that one of his men could take her to the right place and they could _set up_.

She doesn’t even get to see Luca by the time she’s gone, the only person she did recognise was one of the other hired help that Jacob had, a man who called himself _Sanderson_and carried around a rocket launcher like he was physically attached to it. She knew nothing about Sanderson apart from that he was also in one of the American special forces and knew far too much about explosives. He taught Luca how to make a landmine from scratch though, so he was smart.

At the very least, this was more exciting than her work with Jacob. John setting her up on her first official target meant that she got to meet a lot of the cultists, she was able to speak with others about the leaders and find out more about _Eden’s Gate, _and she was able to put her training to the test once again.

It was no different to any of the other times she’d sat in a tree at some distance, except she had found a hunting platform which made things more stable. She’d been trained to get a kill from around over one and half thousand metres, so this was easier than what she used to have to do. She was around 400 metres from the target, had a perfect view and everything was over and done with before she could even feel an ounce of adrenaline.

Fighting for John didn’t sit as well with her, it seemed. This was him handing off his dirty work to her and acting like it was a _test_. That didn’t sit right with her.

“John?” Cicely says softly, adjusting herself so she can continue holding herself in the tree. She watches to make sure that no one spots her position. “It’s done.”

Cicely expects a reply though is met with none. Silence is eliminated only by the sound of the bustle of trees around her, the birds, and somewhere in the distance the chatter of the men who are here to take over the entrance. She radios again but reaches no one.

She decides to avoid being compromised, so climbs down from the ledge in the tree, keeping all intact to make sure it remained to look like a deer hunting platform. It’s far enough away that she’s able to walk away and look no different to another around here going about their day.

After a while of walking, sniper tucked away under her oversized jacket that was lent to her by one of the cultists who drove her to a nearby truck stop, she finds somewhere she believes would be safe enough to stay for a while. She heads down towards the river which separates both John and Jacob’s regions, taking a seat by the river bank to clean her hands and splash some water on her face.

After about ten minutes pass, she pulls out her radio again and calls once more for John. The sun is starting to rise, so soon enough there would be hell breaking loose and she would be stuck in the middle of it.

Somehow she had some luck left with her, as her radio crackles a few moments later and for the first time since getting her she’s happy to hear the youngest brother’s voice. “Is it done?”

“A while ago, yeah,” she states, annoyance in her voice as she looks up towards the clear sky. She enjoys the sun, for once. “I would appreciate if you could get me out of here, so that I don’t get killed by the people loyal to that guy._Please_.”

“I have more of those for you, if you’re interested,” John tells her, looking back from the front passenger seat to where she’s sat. He looks down to her hands, then back to her eyes. “Haven’t had anyone around here that is decent with a rifle in a while. You’ll be in high demand. Where’d you train?”

Cicely is surprised that he doesn’t know, fully expecting him to have already had a rundown on her entire person by one of the people he knows. Or, Jacob might have at least told him. “British army.”

“I’m surprised. That was a little better than military grade training.”

“Special recon, to be specific,” Cicely tells him.

“Makes sense,” John answers, “you and your friend aren’t the usual type we get down here in Hope County. Especially not here in Holland Valley. Up in the mountains? I guess you fit right in there. But down here you’re a shot above the rest. No one down here can fight back against you.”

Cicely denies him an answer as she looks out onto the treeline, accessing her surroundings which look far more relaxed than up in the mountains. There were farms, barely any lights, and the only road was a dirt track. It was quiet down here and John was most definitely right – this was nothing on Afghanistan or when she was in Yemen.

This was, for lack thereof a letter word, _easy_.

She wasn’t having to try and fight her way back against people who cared far too much about a rebel fighter. She didn’t have people against her. Cicely was fighting for the winning side and she was practically untouchable given that most people here learnt to pick up a gun recently.

The ride back to wherever he was taking her wasn’t too long. The radio was on the background and John didn’t talk all that much. He would mumble something to the driver and point at different parts of the trees, though occasionally he would be watching her through the car mirrors with either an emotionless look on his face, or some kind of sadistic smile that meant nothing to her.

Was she curious about John? Not really. He struck her as the younger brother who got what he wanted as a kid. She wasn’t sure if that was the story but it most definitely felt that way to her. Given that Jacob burnt down the farm they lived on, assuming that they _did _live together at that point, there was no way of telling what his childhood was actually like.

Perhaps she would look into that entire family when she got the chance, and she’d be able to work out _how _they got into this mess and _why _they were still fighting against everyone else in a cult that made no damn sense.

She tries to get the idea from her head, though her efforts are cut short when they pull up to a wooden ranch that’s in the middle of a clearing in the trees. There’s an airstrip to the right of the ranch, as well as a hangar, and the ranch itself is a property of size. She assumes that it’s where John lives, with many of his men staying around him.

She finds herself panicking over staying there for the night, still unsure of John. She wonders if she could try and escape through a window and make a break for it, act as if the cult kidnapped her and get out that way. She could get some of her old friends, maybe Chris or Josh who owed her for their time in Serbia, and they could help her get Luca back so they could forget about this fucking place and move on.

That was no way to think about her employer.

It was the only way she could see John, though.

Cicely’s plan is broken by one man leaning on a 4x4 outside the ranch though, leaning on his own rifle as he watches his brother like a _hawk_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry if this kinda sucked, i have sat on this for over a week now and just cannot change it at all. i know what i wanted in each chapter and really the only important part was the bit at the start. sorry it's a filler!


	5. wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Joseph has already spoken with me about the plans for her.”
> 
> “Plans?” Cicely repeats, pulling her arm away. 
> 
> “I told Joseph that I was issuing commands,” Jacob states. “Threats from the resistance aren’t up in the mountains. You have wannabes shooting guns from cars actin’ like that’s the most important thing they’ve done. Get your own men to control the people.”
> 
> John pauses for a moment, narrowing his eyes briefly at his brother. He turns away, reaching over to the table next to the couch and returning with a map of what Cicely assumes to be Holland Valley. “We got these hired mercenaries to help us all."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for your patience with updates! joseph is in the next chapter. I'm hoping I do some justice on him because it's hard to rewrite a pretty well-written character. fortunately the far cry writing people left some gaps for everyone but greg byrk did such a good job with joseph. we shall see!
> 
> i actually made a playlist for this series on spotify which you can find here --https://open.spotify.com/user/lrn6rrb5jgk6f0q512f5jc0x2/playlist/6iEtRMdg7X7Qkn2PDYtaJS?si=G9mQAL1BR2CnCLm5iXzSHw
> 
> follow me on spotify and i'll follow you back <3 much love.

_“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. _ _But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."_ \- **_Matthew 7:13-14_**

Despite her initial concern, Cicely has learnt that she has nothing to fear around these two brothers.

They could easily have her killed, strung from a beacon like another of their enemies and displayed for everyone to see and fear them. She could have her bone ground and fed to the wolves Jacob cared about so much, or her body be used as target practice for John’s men. That wouldn’t happen though, and it was clear from having two of them around her.

She’s sat on the leather couch in the main room of John’s ranch, watching the fire crackle on some freshly cut logs and send smoke straight up the chimney. She wonders how Luca is doing, whether he is curious to find out where she is, too. As unlikely as it was that something had happened to him, she couldn’t have counted her blessings already.

Thoughts of the people who mattered to her drowned out the voices of John and Jacob. Each brother was either side of her, John sat on a chair with a disinterested look on his face as Jacob paced slowly and told him how useless it was for John to have Cicely take one of the resistance out.

A useful asset, Jacob started referring to her, that she was too expensive to be taking people out at that distance. He went on some rant about the rifle she used and how it had the killing distance of over two-thousand metres, which was a little less than the actual figure but she would forgive him, and that some guy who a wolf could take down isn’t worth her time, or mine!

Then started John’s dramatic speech on how the cult needed to share resources and that him using her for such an act was to show that the resistance are all equals, none of them are better than others. It was straight off one of the radio recordings she had heard John preach for and honestly she hated the sound of his voice at this point.

“I don’t understand why you would do it,” Jacob states, leaning against the wall to his left. Cicely looks up to him briefly but when his gaze shifts in her direction she goes straight back to making sure the wooden built ranch doesn’t get set alight by the fireplace. “What am I ‘spose to do when it comes to getting’ Eli?”

John reaffirms his position with a smile. “If you are sending trained special forces after people who only learnt to shoot a gun last month, then won’t Eli fear you even more?”

“He’s not stupid, he knows we’re stalling.”

“The Whitetail Militia are nothing on us, brother,” John tells him. He stands from his chair and pushes it back to the table before he returns to where Cicely is sat. He gestures his hands towards her, catching her attention. “We have people like Cicely. They have too much to fear.”

Jacob looks away as John sits to the right Cicely, placing his hand over her forearm. His eyes carry such a soft gaze that would she not have a preconceived idea he was a bigger psychopath than most of the people around here, she might have just trusted him.

He reaches over to her other arm, turning it over to reveal the 9 small flags on the otherwise unmarked skin. He follows his brother’s actions from the night before, running his thumb over them as though he’s curious to their origin as well. “Joseph has already spoken with me about the plans for her.”

“Plans?” Cicely repeats, pulling her arm away. She crosses her arms over her chest, hiding the tattoos. She tries to tell herself that John was interested because he had his own tattoos, but that plan backfires when he sends a wink in her direction.

“I told Joseph that I was issuing commands,” Jacob states. He seems closer to them than he was before. “Threats from the resistance aren’t up in the mountains. You have wannabes shooting guns from cars actin’ like that’s the most important thing they’ve done. Get your own men to control the people.”

John pauses for a moment, narrowing his eyes briefly at his brother. He turns away, reaching over to the table next to the couch and returning with a map of what Cicely assumes to be Holland Valley. “We got these hired mercenaries to help us all.”

“Which is what’s happenin’,” Jacob states. He picks up his rifle and turns to Cicely, who is watching between the two brothers closely. “Next time he says he asked me what you’re doin’, don’t listen.”

“Won’t happen again,” Cicely states, picking her rifle up from the ground. She sends a smile in John’s direction, placing her hand out in front of her for him to shake. “It was great working with you John. My only recommendations for improvement are not leaving your hired help in the middle of a place they don’t know, and making sure to keep in regular contact in case of injury or complications in the plan.”

John waits for a moment before he reaches his hand out to shake her own, his grasp firm as he purses his lips and takes a pill his ego wouldn’t usually let him swallow. Cicely knows that he’s watching as she walks out the double doors that lead out to the back, likely making sure that there were two perfect holes in the back of her head.

She had made some kind of enemy. Not a typical enemy, but one who wanted to have an authority over her. She had them in the army and when she went rogue. Men will see women like her and assume that they need someone to dominate them and tell them what to do.

That’s it – he doesn’t respect her. Jacob did, in his own way, show an admiration for her and it was likely because of her experiences or what she had done in the past. He didn’t look at her like she was less than him. John saw a need to tell her what to do because without him, she couldn’t do anything. Bullshit.

“John took a liking to ya,” Jacob states, catching up to her as they approach the white 4x4 that he was waiting for them on. He opens the passenger door for her, allowing her to get in before he carries on from where he sits as driver. At least in this car she didn’t have to sit in the back. “Don’t think I’ve seen anyone other than me piss him off, though.”

Somehow, she doesn’t find that too hard to believe. “He sees me as no different to any of the other followers around here. I would usually say that’s a good thing.”

“He isn’t…” Jacob pauses. Cicely catches the end of his gaze directed at her, noticing how he tightens his grip on the steering wheel as he looks back to the dirt road ahead. “John has as much right to ask you to do somethin’ as I do. Just didn’t know he was gonna keep you here tonight.”

Cicely nods, shifting back in her seat so that she can look out of the passenger side window. She eyes the trees, and the lights that follow between the trees from houses and other cars in the area. Luckily for John he was quite out of the way and there wasn’t many neighbours, but from what she remembered there was a town around here which John faced the most problems with. That coupled with the farms, the other churches, and the general hatred for religious cults that came from what he had referred to as ignorant liberals who wish they were in charge.

Maybe he had a thing for power. It wouldn’t be a surprise. He may have decided that he liked the idea of being in charge of people around here and being able to dominate everyone. Same with Jacob, and their other brother. It was the sister that was a mystery. She was as hard to figure out as Cicely was when she was in Yemen.

“What did he do?” Cicely asks, looking back to Jacob with curiosity filling her eyes.

“John?”

Cicely hums. “You were in the military. What was he doing until this whole thing started?”

“He was a lawyer,” Jacob tells her, “went to one of the good schools and was pretty smart. Used to pull strings for people over in Atlanta, working for one of those big firms that make more money than I will ever see.”

“I can definitely see him being a lawyer. He’s got that… I’m right and you don’t matter to me personality that all lawyers have.”

Jacob hums, hinting at some humour from her statement. It brings a warm feeling to her chest. “He cares if there’s money involved.”

“Another trait quite specific to those in the legal field,” Cicely comments. She follows some lights in the sky for a moment that she thinks may have belonged to a helicopter. She had heard from Serena that the cult were sending forces from the sky to make sure everything was okay. “Luca was going to study law. You know, before they caught him for that hacking stuff. He’s pretty smart.”

“I realised.”

“I hope the cameras were of use for you. They weren’t easy to get into, as easy as Luca says it was. We were up most of the night on the plane trying to sort that out for you.”

Jacob exhales slowly, not taking his eyes from the road in front of him. They had made it to the main road and it wasn’t so dark, but there were men parading others down the side of the tarmac. “It only helps me see what threats are coming my way. It’s intel, but not what I wanted.”

“Then what did you want?”

“I want to find that base they’re using,” Jacob says nonchalantly. Cicely imagines that on a daily basis, Eli Palmer is killed a number of different ways in Jacob’s mind. “No one could find it. Not sure how, not sure why.”

Cicely is apprehensive. If no one could find it then there was a reason he had stopped sending people to look for it. The mountain region wasn’t that big and it certainly could be completely mapped should someone want it done. Jacob wasn’t stupid enough to not have his men go over every small location and make note of everything that could and couldn’t be the base.

That was another person that Cicely had to look into later. Jacob Seed, John Seed, and Eli Palmer. It seems like more than general rivalry between Jacob and Eli. There might have been some personal feelings in there. They could have both been in the military? A militia leader would need that kind of experience.

It would be good to meet him, she thinks. SRR training would most definitely come into practice now.

“I could look,” Cicely states. She shifts her body so she’s facing Jacob, and she can tell he’s watching her from the corner of his eye. He doesn’t react immediately. “I’ll take Luca and we can go see what we can find. Can’t be too hard.”

Jacob remains emotionless, though his knuckles turn white as he grips the steering wheel harder. “They have orders to shoot anyone on sight.”

“And I won’t be in sight.”

“It’s not as easy as me sending ya into a forest and askin’ you to find an abandoned house. I’m askin’ you to go straight into the Wolves’ Den and find their source of food. It’s a suicide mission, if not one that ends with you being tortured.”

Cicely hums, knowing that what Jacob does is likely to be reciprocated by his enemies. She didn’t know enough about them to argue back. “It will be just like Yemen, then.”

“What do you mean?”

“Before I was discharged I was a hostage for a few months by AQAP. Kept as a negotiation piece until someone decided I was important enough to be freed. I don’t think a bunker in the middle of the mountains has as much on me as Al-Qaeda. The only connections between the two situations will be me acting like a civilian and me being British.”

“I didn’t know you were a hostage,” Jacob says, looking over to her. He seems conflicted in how to reply. Cicely is likely a bigger oversharer than most around here. “It must… have been hard.”

Cicely shakes her head. “Nah. It… It was what it was. Worst part about it was the other people roped into it. I was stuck in what they called a room with an American journalist that didn’t need to be there. Fucked me up pretty good to see what they would do to civilians.”

“Did they think you were a civilian?”

“I think so,” Cicely tells him, “they aren’t as stupid as everyone thinks. I’m sure one of them worked out at some point that I was special recon but who knows. They treated me the same as everyone else. Pretty shit treatment, though.”

Jacob hums at her words and Cicely curses herself that she made it awkward and he couldn’t reply. Really, who would know what to say when someone admitted to them that they were held hostage in a foreign country by terrorists?

Well, at least she did share it. It was an experience that she would be happy to speak about when asked though when it came to openly talking about it, saying to someone that it actually happened to her, she would have avoided the topic with a passion. It wasn’t like her mind was changed because Jacob was ex-military too. All her friends apart from Luca were service men and women. He was different because she wanted to share it.

And he wasn’t inviting in anyway.

Jacob Seed looked like he would send you to hell and drag you back out himself should you do something wrong. He was a man filled with anger that she couldn’t understand and no matter what he said and who he said it to, that would not change. He was the person you trusted but avoided being alone with.

“I was in Iraq during the first Gulf War,” Jacob says. Cicely tries to make it less obvious that she was hoping he would carry on talking about something. Make it less awkward, you know. “There was this ambush. Me and this guy named Miller, we got separated from the rest of the unit. No food. No radio. Didn’t know where we were goin’ but we started walkin’. I realised we were lost on the third day but Miller wanted to keep at it. Day six we were out of water and day seven he couldn’t walk.”

“_Shit_.”

“I got out of there, though. Took me some time and then I was back over here.”

Cicely realises now how awkward it is to reply to stories like this now she’s in the responding seat. She watches Jacob to see if his face falters but he’s emotionless the entire time. Instead, she offers a smile that he just about picks up on. “You made it back here, not everyone does.”

“We’re not from around here, ya’know,” Jacob tells her, changing the topic. She still listens intently. “Me, John, and Joseph are all from Georgia. Joseph moved us here when we all were reunited. We were in Rome.”

“I don’t really know much about America, so I don’t know where Rome is.”

“Hour or so out from Atlanta,” Jacob informs her. He looks over to her with a questioning gaze. “You telling me you were special forces and don’t know shit about the US?”

Cicely shakes her head.

“I at least thought you would have done your research on us before coming here,” Jacob admits.

“The guy you organised us with wouldn’t even let me know your name.” Cicely starts to watch out the window once again, not wanting to catch Jacob’s gaze for too long. She watches a car for a bit longer than she should have, noticing the guy in the driver’s seat with sunglasses and ragged, medium length hair, was also watching her. “That guy was a bit of an asshole. Only cared about the money. Didn’t want me backing out of this.”

Jacob hums. “Most are. Would you of?”

“Would I have what?”

“Backed out of coming here had you known what a mess this place was.”

Stumped for an answer, Cicely opts to silence for a moment filled with some _umms _as she decides how to answer appropriately.

Because _yeah_, she most likely would have backed out with a full story under her belt and knowing what stupid shit she would be doing.

But did she want to back out now? Not really. She didn’t like it. It was morally a mess that she didn’t want any part of and she didn’t like the idea of having to kill people who just wanted their town back. But she had done it in Kyrat, and Indonesia too. She took down innocent parties because someone paid her to do it but now she was going to act like, just because they were American it suddenly was a different story?

She actually, in the weirdest way, enjoyed the non killing parts.

She liked talking to Jacob. She found it interesting how the Seeds interacted with Hope County and the part of her that wanted to go to university and study psychology left her questioning why everything ended up how it did.

“Maybe,” Cicely answers, peppering her honesty less generously than she could have, “but I’ve only ever turned down one job, and that was because it was a bit too close to home.”

Jacob raises his eyebrow slightly. “Job in the UK?”

“Job taking down a researcher for the British government who once worked for the USSR.”

“Don’t surprise me that they got people doing their dirty work for them,” Jacob answers. He briefly looks over to her, though his gaze is softer now. Not like each stare he sends her way is filled with judgement and hatred. “Maybe that’s why people got in on Eden’s Gate here. Sick of the corrupt feds, done with a government who don’t care about ‘em. Joseph offered them a safe place in a time where that’s the one thing no one else will give ‘em.”

Cicely hums in agreement, deciding to roll down the window a little to get some air. “Then it would most definitely be worth me finding where Eli and his men are hiding themselves.”

“Are you sure?”

“As sure as I was coming here,” Cicely says, “it’s not like I’m going to tear their base apart. I’m looking for the location so your men get a bit of an advantage. Or, at least trying to get you some intel. It’s what I got paid to do for a while. I don’t see anything wrong with just looking. Like in Skyrim, nothing wrong with a little pickpocketing if you’re only _looking _at what the person has in their inventory.”

Jacob shows his confusion with furrowed brows directed straight at her. “I don’t know what that means, but sure.”

“It’s a videogame.” Cicely realises that they are very different people. Did he even have a PlayStation or Xbox? She hadn’t though about that before. “Luca and I play it a lot. We just… _uhm… _yeah.”

Luckily Jacob doesn’t question her any more on what she has to say about videogames. She wonders if he would actually be interested in some of the games. Which guy who was actively involved in the war and now is the controller of security for a cult – okay, maybe that was a bit of a contrast to the war thing – wouldn’t like to play something straight from the mind of Tom Clancy?

Actually, maybe not the best idea. She won’t forget Luca’s friend Johnny who stopped talking to them both following an incident when they invited him to play Black Ops with them.

There was a lot she didn’t know about Jacob that maybe she once would know. She would slowly ease him into conversations and learn more about his past, his present, and then be with him for the future.

Not today, though. As soon as they’re back to the Veteran’s Centre, Jacob is off to his study and ignores her existence completely, not even a goodbye or anything thrown her way.

Instead she’s greeted with some harsh stares from Serena and one of the other hired marksmen they brought in, the pair smoking a pack of cigarettes between them. She doesn’t acknowledge them, choosing to head back to the room so she can catch up on her sleep that John had interrupted.

Except she forgot that she hadn’t seen Luca, and he had been looking for her too.

So her plans of sleeping are discarded and instead she brings Luca on board for her plan of finding the resistance base over in the mountains. He was looking forward to it apparently, because Jacob had also given him some pretty shitty tasks to _keep him busy until the real work came along. _

He was so excited that he found them a ride to the middle of nowhere from a cultist, and within the hour their task of finding the base was underway.

“Where do you think we have to go?” Luca asks, looking down at the map. He turns the map around as if he’s trying to become more acquainted with the map. “Like, did Jacob really give no ideas as to where this place might be?”

Cicely shakes her head, reaching over to adjust the map for him. She turns it the right way around and points to the North-Western section of the mountains. “General suspicion would make me think that they’re going to be somewhere out there.”

“Is that literally all we have to go off?”

“Unfortunately,” Cicely tells him, “though Jacob has one of the bases over there. It’s not that far from here, actually. It’s an abandoned military radio station. If that Eli guy is ex-military as well, he might be trying to keep himself hidden by staying close to home. Or, somewhere that they might easily miss.”

Luca cocks his head to the side as he inspects the map. “So maybe the rocky bits down the southern side of the hill the base is on?”

“Worth a shot.”

“This is not a good strategy at finding your enemies base, regardless of what shot it is,” Luca states.

He follows Cicely regardless, walking behind her as she leads him down the dirt path. They’re somewhere close to a Salmon fishing spot and at the very least they were in safe territory. None of Jacob’s men around to terrorise them should they be in that position. They were also far enough from any resistance to be questioned, should the resistance believe that was the best course of action.

Cicely does find herself stumped with the question of where she could find the base given that there was so much ground and only two of them. She figured that she may have a better idea when she got out here but nothing. Her mind was blank.

The mountains of Hope County weren’t like Yemen, or the Ukraine, or anywhere else she had been on her journeys. It was as plain as… well, an American county she knew nothing about. Even some music wouldn’t make this fun. Regardless of the amount of bears that were likely to be out here, and cougars, and… _wolves_.

“Think of it like exploring the Glowing Sea in Fallout,” Cicely tells him, “not something you like doing, something that makes you go all the way back to the polymer labs and complete some research for a hazmat suit, but you have to do it in order to progress in the game.”

Luca rolls his eyes. “Progress for you. Jacob has no plans for me to leave that office. If you find that he’ll just ass kiss you some more and let you do whatever you want.”

“No, he won’t.”

“He will.”

Cicely sighs, acting more dramatically than she usually would. “This is me making it up to him for that shit with John.”

“Yeah, he was pretty pissed about _that_.” Luca catches up to match Cicely’s pace, walking beside her as they come to a small bridge over a river. “He was shouting at everyone about how only _he _could tell you what to do and that it wasn’t for John to decide what you were doing. He was going on about this whole _she’s mine _stuff which was a bit weird, don’t you think? Probs just a slip of the tongue, or whatever.”

“He said _she’s mine_?”

Luca hesitantly hums in response. “I mean… he said that in passing when he left to go get you. But I’m pretty sure it was only part of the sentence. Like, not as if he actually thinks you’re his. Jacob has the emotional standing of a… a _synth_.”

“Synths have feelings.”

“No_, you_ just had a weird thing for Nick Valentine.”

“I had a thing for Paladin Danse! Not Nick! Stop telling people that, cause one day it will come back and haunt me.”

Luca rolls his eyes, looking down at the map once more. He can’t help a smirk that falls onto his lips, though. “You’re just mad that you couldn’t get Danse to fall in love with you, right?”

“No,” Cicely doesn’t bother to look at Luca, focusing on the hills up to the base instead. She follows a car up a path which she doesn’t think belongs to the cult, and luckily Luca is preoccupied with the map so should they be spotted they most likely could pass for tourists. “He was never as great of a man as Vilkas.”

Luca gasps. “Vilkas? You are joking me. Farkas was better.”

“Farkas was a soy boy.”

“Farkas _is _a—”

Luca stops when he hears the sound of some men shouting in the distance. There’s a few men dressed in military style clothing standing at the top of the rock near to them, one of them pointing over to a helicopter that’s over in the distance. The others around him look to be a variety of ages but the front man, with his longer hair and equally long beard, seems to be the leader.

She’d not seen a picture of Eli, but if there was someone who she had to attribute to him off that one glance, it was definitely the man in front of her. He is the type that would have shit with Jacob, likely.

Seeing that Luca isn’t sure what to do, Cicely points to a location on the map that she picks at random. She then gestures to somewhere off in the distance and acts surprised to see the men at the top, as if she’d _glad _she found someone. “Use your Cole Phelps voice.”

“If you say,” Luca replies, a West coast accent appearing. He somehow managed to catch on with her earlier than she thought he would. “I’m just saying that it could be on the other side of the river.”

“It’s a cabin, how did you get us this lost already? I told you we should have stuck to the road!”

Luca rolls his eyes and folds the map messily, tucking it under his arm as he starts walking to the south-west of where the men are stood. “We’re going this way. I know what we’re doing, so you don’t have to worry. We’re not lost.”

“You said that last time,” Cicely says, defeated as she follows close behind him.

She’s not sure if any of them heard their _spat _but she hopes it took the Whitetails off their trail for long enough to get to a secluded location. A boy from San Francisco and a girl with another generic, probably Nevada, accent weren’t going to be trouble for them. Probably.

They don’t follow Luca and Cicely, so she must have been somewhat right. They walk to the nearest hunting spot where no one was around, avoiding all contact with anyone who could pose a problem to them. Cicely wonders whether it was Eli or if she was paranoid.

It only really takes Luca to reinforce her views to convince her completely.

“So it’s there?” he asks, marking a circle on a map. “You think that could be where Jacob needs to send his men?”

Cicely looks over to where they came from, though there is no men around for her to observe now. “I’m not sure. Possibly. There was enough men there for them to be grouping there for whatever reason.”

“Shall we tell Jacob?”

Cicely denies an immediate answer. She stares down to the map like it will give her an answer but unfortunately not. What would her supervisor have done?

What would Ruben have done?

What would _Jacob _do?

“Don’t tell him about it yet,” Cicely states, taking the map from Luca. She folds it up so it’s small enough to fit in the pocket on her thigh. “We never know when we might need to use it against him."


	6. he is before all things, and in him all things hold together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’ve done something that not many could ever achieve, brother.”
> 
> “I have you to thank for helpin’ me with this.” Jacob nods at his brother before adjusting his position against the wall. “Some people are so dedicated to your cause that we won’t need to be exposing everyone to this.”
> 
> “You won’t?” Joseph questions. He looks back to Jacob, then briefly between Luca and Cicely, before he goes back to the door and grasps the handle to let himself in. “Everyone gets exposed to this. No exceptions.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took me so long! i ended up having my car die on me and had some other troubles with uni stuff. but! its all sorted now. im free for a bit now so hopefully i can get another chapter sorted soon. hope you enjoy joseph! i really didn't like him in fc5. not that he wasn't a great character, i just saw past the bs holier than thou act. i think i'm one of the only people that didn't actually like him so sorry for the bias :(

_ For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. - **Colossians 1:16-18** _

“_Boy _do I wish we were back at home,” Luca states, staring into the dirty microwave. He sighs longingly, closing his eyes as a smile begins to appear on his lips. “I really want an large, _no_, an extra large doner kebab with all the salad, extra onions, burger sauce all over it. Some cheesy chips on the side that are also covered in burger sauce.”

Cicely can’t help but hum as she butters the toast she made for herself earlier. “Just some dominoes would be nice. Stuffed crust. Meat feast. Anything beats the stuff you get around here.”

“There’s a pizza bar not too far from here,” Serena tells them both, interrupting the conversation as she enters the kitchen with a bag of what appears to be potatoes in her hands. She sets them down on the side beside Cicely before turning and leaning on the kitchen side. “And this grill place. You both need to start exploring Hope County a bit more. You make it sound like we’re detached from the real world.”

Luca looks away from the microwave with a hint of a frown on his face. “You kinda… are detached from the real world here.”

“He means you can’t get British take-out food here,” Cicely corrects, feigning Luca’s ignorance to the fact Serena referred to herself as part of this damn place. She picks up a slice of the toast and takes a bite. “Nothing in the world can replace a 4am Uber Eats.”

Luca nods in agreement. They must have both been reminiscing the time they went out to celebrate one of Ruben’s men’s birthdays in central London. Somehow they all made it out okay, but they woke up with a large Uber Eats bill on Ruben’s phone the next morning which he was not _at all _happy about.

“I’ll make sure someone gets you down to that grill so you can try some of it,” Serena tells them.

She was a strange character, by Cicely’s assessment. You wouldn’t have pictured her as a marine.

But then, maybe Cicely was the exact same.

Youthful looking face. Not relatively _strong _looking. Pretty face. A decent sense of fashion and a few tattoos here and there. Probably wears a little bit of make up but it’s not too obvious.

Cicely was an exact copy of that, just a little shorter and from a completely different continent. Her father’s genes had been too dominant over her mother’s and left her with little trace of her mother ever being related to her. The closest thing she had was the light to medium brown hair that was nowhere near the same as her father’s.

No, Cicely looked like they could be siblings sometimes. A picture of her father at the same age would make people think they were twins. The unusual amber eyes, the heart shaped lips, even the narrow jaw was an exact copy. When she was younger she was called _cat_ by her friends due to the likeness to a feline.

Serena, on the other hand… She looked like dog. In the nicest way. Someone who wouldn’t cause any problems, a dogooder who wanted to make sure the world was still spinning at all times. Serena had those large looking eyes that made you think she was trust worthy. Nothing about what Cicely saw was trustworthy, though.

Every time Cicely saw Serena, she was surrounded by the cultists like she was a preacher herself. From the sounds of their conversations, Serena was heavily influenced by the cult and their way of life, and she liked to talk about it with those cultists too. She would join in their singing sessions at night, and spend her time reading the Book of Joseph and taking what the middle Seed brother had to say as being gospel.

Not that it seemed to affect the way that John and moreover Jacob saw her. She was still hired help that they could rely on to see through a job. They didn’t see her as one of their VIPs – which Cicely had also discovered were a thing when she overheard Jacob referring to John’s VIP that was visiting a few of the outposts.

Apparently, they had a few cult VIPs spread around. They were different to the Chosen. VIPs were just _ultra _into what the Father had to say and they would have some special ability that meant the Father himself liked them. Some were scientists, some were trainers, and Cicely had heard one of them be called a priestess not too long ago.

The Chosen were, effectively, watered down versions of what Cicely and Luca were. Special trained, an abundance of skills, and a variety of equipment at their disposal. Jacob gave them more than the rest of the cult members. He sent them to this Chalet over in the West where they spent their day honing whatever skills they were sent there for. Luca said that Jacob planned on having them as a replacement for the people that the Seeds had brought in. The way Serena was going, she wouldn’t be leaving this place any time soon.

Luca and Cicely appeared to be the only sane ones around; bar Jacob, John, and their brother Joseph. It would appear that behind the madness, there was some method after all.

“He’s here!” someone shouts, the voice from outside gathering the attention of all 3 in the kitchen.

Cicely can only see a car pulling through the gates from where she’s sat, though she can’t see who’s in it. She only sees the crowd that begins to form around the car, and given that John and Jacob didn’t get that kind of reception around here, she had to assume that it was someone else.

It’s confirmed to her that she was indeed going to meet _the Father _when Serena dashes for the door and the entire conversation is forgotten. Luca and Cicely share a look before they decide to head for the door, too.

That’s not before Luca expressed his concern for leaving his food that he had been waiting all this time for. She understands, really, but eventually they both seem to realise that seeing the who they’re referring to is probably pretty important. Especially when the _can’t show any emotion _guys start to show emotion.

_It can’t be that bad_.

Cicely finds herself curious as to whether he looks like they describe him. A godly looking man, exactly like that statue on the hills. Warm eyes that make you want to work with him. A voice that could bring anyone in.

_He _can’t be that bad, she means. He’s just one guy.

One guy that has started an entire cult on his own and led to the destruction of families, homes, and the entire county. But there _must _have been method behind his madness.

Luca and Cicely are standing near the back, closest to the wall than anyone else. Luca has an advantage, seeing that he’s tall enough to see over some of the other heads in view. Cicely on the other hand is left to wait until some of the crown clears, which is much to her annoyance.

“He, uh…” Luca stops his sentence, looking to her with a confusion, “the Father has a manbun?”

Cicely raises her brows as she tries to get on her tiptoes to look over the crowd. It’s all in vain, because there was no way that she was going to be able to see him through the crowd at this height. She wasn’t short, she was 5’7 and that was taller than most of her friends, but she would definitely need to be over the 6 foot mark to stand a chance here.

So she waits, again, looking around the crowd to see if there are any other faces she recognises. Instead of finding more of the other hired help, her eyes fall straight to Jacob who’s standing by a wolf’s pen, to the other side of the crowd to her.

He was already watching her quite closely and takes her gaze as an invitation to walk over to her. Cicely acts as though she doesn’t notice Jacob coming her way and instead tries to look over the crowd again.

“My brother ain’t that interesting,” Jacob states, demanding Cicely’s attention away from the crowd. She looks up to him with a blank expression. “Don’t let these crowds fool you.”

Cicely disagrees with what he says, pursing her lips as she furrows her brows. “He’s interesting enough to start this whole thing.”

“That’s charisma,” Jacob affirms, “I’m sure they taught you a hell of a lot of that, too.”

“I think it’s the manbun,” Luca comments, turning to them both. He must have felt _more _comfortable around Jacob considering that the two spent so much time together during the day.

“If Rafe Adler had a manbun, I would probably follow him,” Cicely confirms, looking back over to the crowd. They slowly start to part as Joseph makes his way towards the main building and Cicely finally gets to see the Father all this time. She’s disappointed to say the least. “Actually, it’s not the manbun that would make me follow him.”

Joseph isn’t all he lived up to be in those pictures, save for the yellow tinted, wide framed glasses that matched every promo shot exactly. He looks like his brothers, more so John, and he wears a suit with unusual looking brandishing on the pockets. He looks well tamed, apart from the beard which is messy but slightly more kept than Jacob’s. He has the kind of eyes that people would trust. Cicely sees through it though.

Jacob crosses his arms over his chest, ignoring the crowd in front of him as he continues as if Joseph wasn’t there. “I’m going to assume that Rafe Adler is another reference to a video game.”

“Unchartered 4,” Luca confirms, smiling widely, “biggest asshole I’ve ever met, but he had a pretty good vibe going on about him. He’s the kind of guy you would blindly follow into battle. Or treasure seeking, in this case.”

“Yeah, it was probably something to do with the whole being rich thing.”

Cicely assumes that Luca has been talking a bit too much around Jacob for him to be picking up on the video game references already. Luca had a completely new personality compared to Jacob, so she always worried that they would end up having more quarrels than half decent conversations.

But Luca was a good kid. He was a pick me up when you were down and he was also a source of entertainment for anyone who was to be kept in a room all day with him. She’d spent months with it being just them two in the middle of the nowhere, she knew that whenever Luca was around, there was never going to be a boring moment. Cicely never thought that Jacob would see him that way, though. She thought he would take Ruben’s approach to Luca – a good for nothing kid that was decent with computers but no other talents than that. A good for nothing kid who needed to pay their way, too.

It brings some relief to her, though. She hasn’t got to worry about Luca constantly, she doesn’t need to put herself in a position that means she’s constantly fearful of their future. She thinks that maybe Jacob will be able to look after Luca and make sure he doesn’t end up like Ruben wanted him.

“If he asks, you’re both assisting me,” Jacob states, standing up straighter as his brother approached the group. He nods at the handgun in Cicely’s holster. “Don’t say you brought that from home, either.”

Cicely nods, crossing her arms over her chest as she watches the Father draw ever closer. He sees her watching and offers her a smile, one that she doesn’t particularly want to reciprocate. Instead, she clears her throat and looks down to the ground, keeping an eye on her boots for the time being.

She’s apprehensive to look up even when she hears Joseph address his brother. She missed whatever the greeting between them was since she didn’t want to look up, and even when she does look up she directs her gaze straight to Luca who is shifting his eyes around awkwardly.

When she finally does look to Jacob and Joseph, after blocking their entire conversation out, she’s met with a question from the Father himself. He looks at her with uneasiness, hesitating with his words for a moment. “You must be Cicely?”

She nods in reply.

“My brothers have both told me many things about you,” Joseph states, reaching out his hand for her to take. She waits for a moment before she shakes it, offering him a half-assed smile in return. His smile drops a touch at her gesture. “John tells me you’ve taken out a few of those resistance leaders since you got here, commanded by both him and Jacob. You are helpin’ us a whole lot more than you realise and I thank you for that.”

Cicely nods again, this time much more reserved. She glances up to Jacob who remains emotionless, allowing the situation to continue. At least she didn’t have to lie to the holy man about what she actually did whilst she was here. Why did Jacob want her to say they worked closely together?

“And this is Luca,” Joseph says in a cheerful tone. He turns to the younger with his hands together in front of him. There’s a rosary wrapped around the hand that he didn’t use to shake Cicely’s hand. “You’ve been a great help to us too. The cameras have meant we can further prepare the bunkers for the Collapse. It has me wondering whether there are any other places in Hope County that have some secret cameras around.”

Luca shifts uncomfortably at his words. At least Cicely wasn’t the only one who picked up the weird vibe Jacob gave off. “We checked. They’re the only cameras but, uh… yeah.”

“I appreciate you checkin’ for us,” Joseph says. He cuts the conversation off by turning back to Jacob with all emotion missing from his disposition. “You ready to show me the new projects?”

His demeanour changes so quickly that it’s as though he’s a different man altogether. Joseph Seed and the Father. Two different personalities on the same man. Cicely’s mind wonders to a time when none of this existed and it was all a fragment of an idea in his head. She heard that he was married, once upon a time. Serena had told her that his wife had died in a car accident when he still lived in Georgia, and his child died not too long after that. She didn’t go into details but it could all be found in the Book of Joseph, should Cicely wish to find out more.

As tempting as it was, she had no desire to find out more about the leader. There was part of her that thought maybe she could understand that way, that a small piece of his insanity that went into this place would help her to see why everyone was infatuated with him, though she wished to know more about the ones who followed him. John and Jacob, specifically. Even that girl they called sister for whatever reason.

Cicely’s arm is pulled by Luca, who gestures to follow Joseph and Jacob. She questions him for a moment, looking to him with wide eyes until Jacob looks back to see if she’s following them. It’s then that she decides to go without a fight, rifle in her arms as she acts a barrier between the Father and his adoring fans behind her.

“It’s comin’ along well,” Jacob states, facing his brother. He leads the small group to a door that leads back inside the Veterans Centre, then takes them up a floor as he explains more about something Cicely doesn’t understand. “We’ve been working on this new technique, involves more work but less time in the training. The wolves are responding well. The people, well… They’re responding better than we could of thought.”

Cicely raises an eyebrow as she turns to Luca, confused as to what Jacob means. Luca only shakes his head with wide eyes.

“You think that we could start using them soon?”

Jacob hums. “John told me that he needs someone on that bridge into Holland Valley. I’m workin’ on it. If he needs someone now then I have Gayle and Draženović who could go out there.”

“Is it worth sending the best out there for defending a bridge?” Joseph questions. Cicely notices the glance he sends her way and responds with a scowl. She _really _did not like that man and what he brought. “Could you make use of others?”

“They are most appropriate for the defence. They have front line experience in that area. You could send two of them out there and have them return alive, rather than send a hundred of John’s men and get a blood bath in return.”

It seems to keep Joseph quiet on the topic, though he pulls a note from his pocket and passes it over to Jacob with little secrecy. On the front of the page is a picture of a man with scruffy hair hidden under a cap, aviators covering his eyes too. She vaguely knew the face, though she couldn’t recall why. His cap reads _Rye & Sons_, and she remembered that name from a spot down near John’s ranch. Specifically, she knew it as the place that John’s men stole planes from.

“We need this one gone,” Joseph affirms, referring to the picture he passed to Jacob, “they’re causing problems in Falls End. You think you have problems up here. There’s 3 of them down there.”

Joseph hums, though the paper is discarded in his pocket. “Some of the locals around the F.A.N.G centre are try’na get that bear back.”

“Cheeseburger?” Luca interrupts, taking the attention of both the men in front of him. Neither reply, though Luca carries on as if he _knows _he’s right about it. “I heard someone talking about it on one of the radio channels. They’re saying Cheeseburger should be used as a distraction, something like that. Though they’ve got to get him over to a safe location first. Probably their base or something.”

“Any luck with that base?” Joseph questions, partially ignoring Luca’s comments.

“No,” Jacob says, “we sent some people out there to look, though no luck as of yet. We have a general idea, though.”

Cicely honestly did not expect Jacob to have believed the whole cover story of Luca and Cicely almost getting killed by cultists for being normal looking people. Perhaps Jacob trusted them too much, or told himself that believing such a lie could benefit him in the future. Cicely didn’t buy the whole _trust _thing just yet.

She’s glad that she doesn’t have to hear Joseph’s reply, instead having to witness Jacob’s _projects _first hand. It wasn’t what she expected, though really, she should have anticipated it.

“We’re not sure of the effects of prolonged exposure,” Jacob tells Joseph, standing by the metal entrance with a large glass window to a dimly lit room. He taps on the glass with his the nozzle of his handgun. “But they’re completing the trials a lot quicker.”

Cicely swallows her worries for what’s inside when she sees men sat on chairs inside. They all looked… lifeless. She takes a step forward to inspect the situation, though Luca pulls her back so she can’t see any more. She’s met with a look from Jacob too, one that is mostly consistent a commander, but he also shows signs of worrying.

Worrying for what, exactly?

Cicely clears her throat as she steps back to where Luca is, allowing Joseph to inspect like he wished to. He moves closer to the glass, looking around the room as he hums. “You’ve done something that not many could ever achieve, brother.”

“I have you to thank for helpin’ me with this.” Jacob nods at his brother before adjusting his position against the wall. “Some people are so dedicated to your cause that we won’t need to be exposing everyone to this.”

“You won’t?” Joseph questions. He looks back to Jacob, then briefly between Luca and Cicely, before he goes back to the door and grasps the handle to let himself in. “_Everyone _gets exposed to this. No exceptions.”

Cicely only has a moment to register his sentence before he disappears inside the room, door shut behind him. It leaves Jacob, Luca, and Cicely on the outside with an air of confusion between them.

She thinks about asking Jacob straight about it, though she disregards that idea straight away considering _all _she is to him is hired help and that was clear. Joseph, holy as he may be, did not seem to like her one bit. She didn’t know why. The way he acted around her was as if he was scared of her. Something like that. She knew the look men gave women who were in a position of power.

It wasn’t as if Joseph was afraid purely because she was a woman. He didn’t strike her as a man who lived to see only the inequality in life. No, he was afraid because her presence was something challenging to him. She saw it often in the army and when she was working for Ruben.

Joseph wanted Jacob to see her as that and only that. Cicely wasn’t blind so it was easy for her to notice the way that Jacob preferred her company over others. That he came to sit with _her _instead of sleeping was a dead give-away but generally choosing to speak with her over the people he had been around for such a long time was further confirmation.

Maybe he was lonely and she was overstating it. Cicely could have estimated it wrong and he simply prefered her company because she was in a similar situation to him. Kind of. It was just the army thing they could relate on but for him, that might have been a lot.

She notices him staring, too. She looks up, initially to see if Joseph was any closer to leaving the room and instead she notices those Ryan Gosling looking eyes watching her every move. She holds eye contact for a second before she turns to Luca and picks up where they left off a long, _long _time ago.

“I think what I miss the most about the UK is tomato soup with cheese sandwiches,” she says, “when you’re getting over a cold and you get a big ass bowl of that pure tomato heaven and rip up the cheese sandwiches, scattering it all over the soup and letting it soak in. I would literally give up all my money to get some Heinz soup here.”

Luca nods in agreement, though turns to the eldest brother to join him in the conversation too, much to Cicely’s disappointment. “It sucks that America doesn’t have Heinz.”

“Heinz?” Jacob repeats.

“They sell food from the gods,” Luca tells him, “you gotta order some Heinz beans on Amazon. Stick them on some toast, sprinkle some cheese over the top, you’re sorted.”

Cicely hums. “It’s the equivalent of poffertjes for breakfast.”

“Please don’t make me wish I was back at home,” Luca says, shutting his eyes as he leans his head back. He sighs as he looks back to Cicely, lips parted. “You literally are making the fact I left my food in the microwave earlier bite me in the ass.”

“Do you guys really want Heinz and poff…poffer–“

“_Poffertjes._”

“Yeah, that, do you really want those here?”

Jacob’s question is mostly directed to Cicely, but Luca is the one who practically begs him to fulfil their wish. “I would literally guard that bridge to Holland Valley myself if it meant that I was graced with some food I actually like.”

“McDonalds would be nice,” Cicely confirms, her wishes a bit easier to fulfil. Even if there wasn’t a McDonald’s in Hope County, there must have been one nearby. It was Montana’s favourite fast-food restaurant. They couldn’t just disregard that.

“What’s the deal with Joseph, though?” Luca asks, changing the topic. He asks it so casually that Cicely wasn’t expecting it from him, and it’s likely that Joseph felt the same, judging by the furrowed brows he gives to Luca. “Like, how’d this all happen?”

Jacob remains in the same state. “You mean, how did Eden’s Gate start?”

“Sure. That works.”

“Joseph has heard those voices since he was younger, tellin’ him what he should do and say. He went to Atlanta to find John and worked as a caretaker for a while until he found us both.” Jacob clears his throat, standing up properly as he looks around the glass to where his brother is. He looks back to Cicely and Luca with some apprehension, though eventually met Cicely’s eyes. “Moved to Hope County after the cops got on our asses.”

Cicely is the first to notice the Father heading out of the room, looking away from Jacob as soon as he comes into the corner of her eyes. She looks over to Luca and shakes her head, mouthing to him as best she can in Dutch, a language that she had practically begged Luca to teach her over the years. ‘_Don’t trust them.’_

Luca looks at her questioningly, though doesn’t blow the little cover she has by outright asking her.

“This is lovely work, Jacob,” Joseph says to his brother, stopping in front of him. He shuts the door behind him, making sure it is completely sealed shut. “I trust you will be making sure _everyone _is conditioned.”

_So it was conditioning? _Interesting to know. Cicely wants to know more about the people he has in there.

Jacob nods once. “We have a waiting list for people. Whoever needs it most will get it first.”

“I’ll need a copy of this list,” Joseph states. He ignores the extra presences around him and walks away, back in the direction that the group came in. Jacob follows not too far behind, with Cicely and Luca also behind them. He carries on without a care for who listens. “When those resistance leaders are caught, I want them in there straight away. Make sure you work with Faith and prepare them for the Collapse, too. John will baptise them in their own time, as long as they are under our control.”

She’s not sure if she’s lucky that they stop talking after Jacob agrees, because as much as it was beneficial to not know who the cult worked completely, it was in Cicely’s nature to want to know more about what is going on around her. It will make sure that she keeps Luca safe, and herself at the very last instance. But she doesn’t find out what she wants to know, the only thought that manages to come out clear is that she wants back into _that_ room.

But she’s glad when Joseph gets into the car he came in and disappears into the distance, no one following him apart from the stares of the onlookers who admire him for everything he does. Not that she has any clue what that is. Maybe they were channelling _all _their lost hope into him, or they really did believe that the end was coming and trusted him to protect him.

Joseph did not seem like a leader. John was charismatic. Jacob was tactical. Faith was compassionate. Joseph was all of those things, but not to the degree that everyone else was. Maybe that made him a better leader, she wasn’t sure. What she did know was that for whatever reason, everyone loved him.

She would not be one of those people, even if he tried to make her one.

And Cicely realised, above all things, that would be his priority.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> btw, follow me on twitter and i will follow you back! @maoyukhei. i'm also setting up a wattpad so will update you on that, cause i will post some extra stuff there like character documents etc


	7. he is the one who goes with you to fight for you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She can reduce the number of people who die today, if she reduces the number of people they’re up against.
> 
> And it only takes two shots to give them the good death they wanted that badly.
> 
> One of them is no older than Luca. The other, likely to be around her age too. It makes her hands shake as she crouches down to them, taking one of their pistols.
> 
> That could be her and Luca.
> 
> And she thinks maybe it could be by the end of today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so! this took ages and i'm sorry. i've been struggling to write this so it's not my best. but it's a turning point so it's not so much filler anymore. hope you enjoy!

_ "So it shall be, when you are on the verge of battle, that the priest shall approach and speak to the people.  And he shall say to them, ‘Hear, O Israel: Today you are on the verge of battle with your enemies. Do not let your heart faint, do not be afraid, and do not tremble or be terrified because of them; _ _for the Lord your God is He who goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you."_ \- _**Deuteronomy 20:2-4**_

It had been quiet all night.

Cicely realised there was a problem when the deer and other wildlife stopped running through the trees surrounding the Veteran’s Centre, as if they were scared to be there. Her night shift was a symphony of her trying to find life beyond the treeline and a dead silence staring back of her.

She thought maybe there was a bear roaming nearby, considering that the night was silent and any organised attack would have come sooner than this. So never expected a group of working men and women to have a plan which would mean that they could infiltrate the perimeter, but she underestimated them.

As Cicely approached the back of the building, she catches sight of movement in the corner of her eye. She thinks that it might have been a wolf but when she turns in the direction of the unidentified subject, she sees a person dressed in all black running towards the fence of the Veteran’s Centre. She would have missed it if she hadn’t spotted it before.

The person, she assumes a member of the resistance, stops by the fence and waves across the water for someone else to follow. She sees the other person dart from the tree line, dashing to where the other person stands. She can’t confirm they are resistance until they start to scale the fence.

For the first time in a while, she has to do _something_.

She aims her rifle at the person who is closer to the bottom of the fence. The person was waiting for the other person to clear it before starting their venture, so she takes them out first with a shot to the head.

When the initial intruder realises that their companion is down, they jump back from the fence to check on them. It was a mistake for them, because when they’re crouching down to see how bad the wound is, Cicely takes them out in the exact same fashion.

And then she panics, because bad luck comes in threes.

She makes a dash for the door that leads back inside, her plan being to grab Jacob or set off the alarms on the first floor. She wasn’t sure why they didn’t put alarms on the roof, but she had asked for them to do that a number of times to no avail.

She manages to get down the stairs quickly, into the corridor that leads to Jacob’s office. He’s usually awake at hours like this, since it was only around 2am and there were still a lot of lights on around the Centre.

She’s stopped though. The sound of a man’s voice brings her terror as she reaches another doorway. It’s not one she knows, and it definitely won’t bring her anything good.

As the voice gets closer, albeit hushes, she makes out their plans and realises that the resistance are already in the building. She’s not sure how, but their plan falls alongside the realms of shooting every cultist they can find and making sure that Jacob is left as good as dead, too.

She doesn’t know how many of them are in here, nor does she know how long she has, but what she does know is that she can’t reach Jacob with them roaming the hallways. She instead does what she think is the next best thing, preventing what they wanted.

She moves to the nearest door frame, peeking around the corner to see if there is anything coming her way. She catches sight of a group of 3 resistance members, the leader pointing each of them in their own directions.

One of them, a woman, starts walking towards Cicely. Cicely narrowly avoids being seen by her, though her handgun is firmly in her hand with the silencer on the end. She takes a deep breath as she waits for the woman to approach.

It takes a while for her to approach. At first Cicely thinks the woman may have taken a different route after some feeling she got that things were not as they seemed. The silence that echoes for the time being makes her wonder who and what could be coming her way.

Cicely finally hears some footsteps approaching her. They’re light, the woman has some training. She notices how heavy the woman is breathing. They teach you to control that for situations like this; maybe she wasn’t listening properly. She holds her breath as she approaches the doorway but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t already found.

The woman is grabbed by the throat, Cicely’s hand covering her mouth to keep her for screaming. One round to the head and the woman is still. Cicely places her down on the ground slowly, making sure to not make too much noise. Cicely surprises herself with how quickly she moves on, but she knows deep down the reason she’s so heartless is that she was trained to act that way.

She can still hear talking, though she doesn’t know where it’s from. Somewhere on the same floor as her, though the location would never have been easy to guess. Her next best idea is to head for the alarm and make sure that as many people she could get out of here would be given the chance.

She wonders why she wasn’t given a radio, either. She realises that Jacob gave her no precautions to an attack around here.

_Jacob_. She had no idea if he was okay – where he was, if he knew what was happened, if _they _were heading for him.

It seemed likely they would go for him. The resistance, a bunch of _pussies_, they would all go for the leader rather than start at the bottom and work their way up. Did they not know that everyone in this cult idolised the Seeds in a way that couldn’t be replicated again?

This whole place was a fucking mess. Cicely wanted out.

She heads for the stairs initially, taking the Veteran’s Centre one floor at a time. She takes the stairs down to the floor below, checking the corridor that leads around the building to where the hospital beds used to be. The rooms were now used for weapons, ammunition, and also some places to sleep. It was a good place for her to start. Staying silent wasn’t the game plan for the rest of the night here.

She gets to the first door when she sees some torches at the other end of the corridor. They strike her with some fear because there is at least five separate beams of light coming her way and she isn’t sure who they are. So she thinks rationally. Two deep breaths and she decides to pick the door she was next to and wait there until she knew what else she could do.

She doesn’t shut the door behind her. It was hard enough to open the door silently to make sure that the attention wasn’t diverted to her. In the dim light that the wall lamps provided, one would have to rely on every sense by sight to survive. The click of the latch on the door would have everyone in here in a second. She could hear their boots on the floor, but they seem to disappears as she gets further into the room.

Cicely’s heart thumps as she crouches in the corner of the room. Her eyes dart around the darkened room, trying to find source of light that she can use for reference. Some time has passed, she’s not sure whether it’s closer to 2 or 3 now, though it could be later given the amount of people that are asleep. She’s not sure if anyone else has seen anything by now, or where anyone is.

Her thoughts jump to Luca, who is likely still in the room in the basement, unsure of what’s happening. She knows that setting off an alarm will result in a worse catastrophe than she can cope with. If they know that she knows they’re here, then they’ll open fire and it will be over before she can even begin.

She moves across the room slowly, checking each step to make sure it is silent. The layout of the building means that she’s able to take her steps without any creaking. She’s able to get to the other side of the room before she hears some chatter of the resistance. She ducks behind the door to the corridor to hear what she can, now that the footsteps have started to disappear.

‘_I heard that he’s got some special forces here_,’ one of them says, a male voice that sounds no older than Luca. He chuckles to himself at the end, which brings a shiver down Cicely’s spine. ‘_We should at least try to get killed by one of them, rather than whatever mindless drones Jacob has around here._’

The person he’s with agrees with a hum. ‘_Better to die a death that would have been classified a good kill._’

That alarm was a massacre in the waiting.

She can reduce the number of people who die today, if she reduces the number of people they’re up against.

And it only takes two shots to give them the _good_ death they wanted that badly.

One of them is no older than Luca. The other, likely to be around her age too. It makes her hands shake as she crouches down to them, taking one of their pistols.

That could be her and Luca.

And she thinks maybe it could be by the end of today.

Cicely didn’t usually worry. She was the last person to think of the worse situation, especially when it came to her work. She took what happened as it happened and didn’t worry until she needed to.

It wasn’t like this in Japan, or Indonesia. She took Luca with her but they were together. It was cults over there as well, but they were different. She was on the good side. Now she’s very clearly on the bad one.

This was a… Kyrat kind of situation.

She didn’t have time to overthink it, though. She only has a few moments before the sound of ringing runs through the building and scares her back into the reality of the situation. She hears screaming, shouting, but no guns.

Not a single shot is fired after the alarm, not at first.

She can see from the window that the people begin to gather on the outside of the building, trying to find reason to why the alarm had been set off in such a manner _and _at such a time. She can see Serena, off to the side with another man who she vaguely recognised as a VIP.

She sees women trying to find the people they consider to be close to them, and men gathering as many weapons that they could find for the impending attack.

There are archers lining the fence line, snipers at each door ready to fire at anyone who approaches from far. The shotguns are loaded and people are ready for the massacre they always expected, but ignored for the sheer idea that they could reach the bliss without it.

She doesn’t see Luca, nor does she see Jacob. At this point, as she watches from the window onto the outside she’s not sure who she would rather see. She would know Luca is safe, or she would know that this place has a leader to take them forward.

She waits for about ten minutes before she makes an attempt to leave the room. There didn’t seem to be anyone on her floor – no one walked past, good or bad. There was only a feeling at the back of her mind that she should remain for as long as she could.

She pushes it aside in the hopes to get down to the basement and find Luca herself. She didn’t put it past him to have headphones on and slept through an entire alarm. Lord knows that everyone downstairs didn’t care about him at all. As long as they were safe then everything was fine.

She steps out into the corridor with doubt as to her safety. A check of both sides of the darkness and she heads towards the stairs she originally came from. She knows that the floor below has all the windows, which were all full length, smashed, so worst comes to worst she can jump from the windows down onto something below. As many back up plans as she can make, she knows that there isn’t going to be complete resolve to whatever is going on here.

Something isn’t right.

The mass of people on the outside Is incentive for everyone man and woman who came here to kill, to _start _killing. Yet none of them do that.

They’re looking for someone.

They want Jacob. That’s who they came here for, and that’s who they’re going to get.

Anyone else who dies is collateral damage and a further advancement for the resistance. Unless the collateral damage had dog tags and history of killing for a living.

She touches her foot down on the floor of the lower level slowly. She looks around, hoping to find something rather than nothing. Her eyes dart to any sign of life though she finds nothing around her. Emptiness. Silence.

Her hands begin to sweat as she puts her hands out in front of her and points it out in front of her. She walks forwards, towards the stairs which will take her down another level again, back to the first floor where she can hopefully find someone who can take her to Luca.

She’s so close that she can see the lights in rooms downstairs. She almost takes a sign of relief that she made it all the way down here despite any odds that were against her.

She steps into the moonlight that comes through the smashed window. She slows down, looking around for anything still that may catch her off guard.

A second of losing her concentration and she is only filled with regret.

She’s been on the end of snipers before. Not in a situation like this.

She should have recognised the quiet. The painstaking slowing of seconds until she feels the force of a bullet straight into her flesh that she didn’t expect to feel.

She feels the pain of this entire county in one hit.

Cicely _was _the collateral damage here, and that was always going to be the case.

She bites down on the side of her hand to stop herself crying out in pain. Looking down to the ground, Cicely can see the blood starting to pour from the wound on her leg onto the floor below. She tries everything she can to not make a sound but it’s not working.

She wasn’t prepared to get shot. She didn’t think anyone would have it in them, especially to hit her from so far away. She looks around the hall to see if she can see anyone nearby. No one. It’s empty.

Dragging herself to safety doesn’t seem like an option. The bullet struck her from the side, just below her knee. She can’t stand on her leg because her knee would give way.

No, she’s stuck in this awful room on her own until someone realises that she’s not around.

Given that Luca wasn’t out there, she doubted that would be any time soon. There was no chance any of them would remember that she hadn’t made it out and start looking for the night guard who let someone get into the Veteran’s Centre.

_Dear God_, if she makes it out of the situation then she will be crucified for making a mistake like that. She couldn’t see where they came from and she had no idea where the resistance may have found a way to get in but –

It was better to _not _think about that until she sorted herself out.

Her hands clasp around the wound, pressing down to try and stop the bleeding until she can find something to tie around her thigh. She looks around and ultimately decides that the jacket she’s wearing, a light hoody she picked up for nights where the wind wasn’t too strong, would have to do.

She ties it around her thigh, as tight as she can get it without crying too loudly to attract unwanted attention to her. She picks up the guns she dropped and pushes herself back into the corner, a trail of blood following her movements as she makes sure that whoever fired the shot can’t get to her again.

Cicely tucks herself away in the corner of the room, breaths frequent as she tries to hold onto some of her rationality. She shuts her eyes, teeth clenched, trying to distance herself from the sharp pains that shit over and over.

Every second that goes by feels like an hour. It was easier when phones existed and she could get out of situations like this. But no, all she could do was wait.

Wait until someone would find her. Save her. Rescue her.

And the time comes at some point.

She’s brought back to reality by the sounds of boots on the wooden flooring. At first she tells herself not to open her eyes because she’ll face a gun to her head and expect a bullet between her eyes, but the atmosphere changes and _forces_ her eyes open.

By god she is so happy that she forgets the pain.

“Take my hand,” Jacob tells her, stretching out his arm for her. He doesn’t look back at her, after immediately meeting her eyes the first time, because he’s making sure that no one comes through one of the other doors. Once he realises that she’s not taking his hand, he turns back to her with wide eyes. “That’s an order.”

Cicely shakes her head. “I can’t, I won’t be able to stand.”

Jacob looks at her questioningly, though follows her gaze down to her leg where he can see the blood seeping from the fresh wound. “Just one shot?”

“From a sniper,” Cicely tells him, “they must have one in the trees. They’re still there.”

Jacob looks around to the treeline that’s visible from where they are sat. It’s still dark, so vision isn’t great. After a few seconds he turns back to her and crouches down to her level. “I can get you out of here.”

“_You_ will get yourself killed,” Cicely replies, wincing as she tries to move her leg. She looks up to Jacob and shakes her head. “Just go. Get rid of anyone in the treeline and come back for me. It’s not that much blood. The others are more important.”

“Shut up,” he replies, ignoring her command and pulling her up with all of his strength.

Like she said, Cicely is unable to stand and ends up toppling into Jacob’s arms without resistance. She tries her best to stand on her feet but weigh sends her toppling down more. If Jacob’s arms weren’t around her then she would have fallen straight back down to the ground.

He holds her up for a moment. Nothing more, no talking or breathing. He just looks at her for a moment as her wide eyes stare back at him thankfully. She stays there. She _likes _it there.

She could have stayed there until someone came and found them. The someone is a something. A red laser dot that shines on his head which sends a momentary panic through her bones.

Cicely isn’t sure what to do. She’s visible panicked. She pulls Jacob’s shoulders down but he’s already holding all of her weight. He doesn’t budge, not until she pulls him to his side and sends the pair of them down onto the ground to avoid any shot hitting him as well.

He didn’t get shot. That was what she was happy about. No bullet between his eyes like they wanted.

But she ends up on top of him, on the ground, still in his arms as she looks down to him with panic spread through her. _He almost died_. Now she’s looking down at him like she almost had something else going on her mind.

Maybe it’s the worry of death that gets to her. The intimacy as she dances with the bullet of a sniper, blood dripping down her leg. She hasn’t got a clear thought running through her mind; surely they all got mixed up as she looks down and finds that pressing her lips onto Jacob’s is the best thing to do.


	8. do not judge, or you too will be judged

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I think it’s unfair for you to judge me, when the only person who can judge me is God himself.”
> 
> “You are correct. You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. I only ask you if you would like help with accepting your past?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi guys! thank you for putting up with my messy update schedule. it's my friend's birthday wednesday (hi jam if i've forced you to read this, happy birthday again) so i've been sorting some stuff out for her, hence my delayed update. I also have been working on some other fics I planned out (including one for han jisung, if any stays end up reading this). 
> 
> if you want to keep up with me outside of ao3, i have twitter! it's @maoyukhei. i post a lot of skz/day6/ikon/nct stuff but will follow back. much love to you all! hope you learn a little more of some relationships.

_"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." **\- Matthew 7:1-2**_

There’s a quiet chirping coming from the trees to the right of her, the water slowly lapping onto the banks of the river from ripples that come directly from the boats that patrol the waters night and day. The water itself, though slightly warmed by the sun that beats down onto it for the majority of the day, still stings with a bitter cold when Cicely catches some in her hands and splashes it onto her face.

Her mind goes blank for a moment, likely caused by the touch of the water on her skin, though within a few seconds the shouts from cultists drag her back to a reality she finds harder and harder to avoid. She rests her hand on her knees, breathing in and out slowly, a technique she had been taught by one of her old friends in the service who would help her meditate and release all of her worries.

Cicely finds it hard to put herself in the stillness she used to reach. She would be able to stabilise herself, centred in the world around her, whenever she was back in the UK in that dull coloured room with nothing more than a laptop to keep her company. That may have been a step up from how things were at the moment.

“Found you!”

Cicely turns around, surprised to hear another voice with her. She had found herself a spot on the bank of the river that she never saw anyone else go to. However, she should have expected that of all people, _one _would be able to find her.

She smiles, though it may have seemed too forced. “It wasn’t that hard to find me, anyway.”

“In this place?” Luca shakes his head as he sits down beside Cicely, dumping his bags to the other side. “Trust me, it’s hard. You’re not on any of those cameras and I have Joseph asking me every day where you are.”

Cicely raises her brow, concerned as to the mention of _that _brother. “Joseph wants to know where I am?”

“He needs to talk to you.”

“I don’t want to talk to him,” Cicely states, turning from Luca and going straight back to the lake. She picks up a stone and tries to skim it across the water, though it doesn’t work. She sighs in defeat, instead going back to the black book she had in her lap. “What is he going to tell me, Luca? I know he has a problem with me.”

Luca nods loosely, crossing his legs as he turns to face her some more. “He doesn’t have a problem with you. He just wants to talk to you about this whole thing. Tell you what you need to know. We work for him, you know.”

“We work for Jacob,” Cicely answers, “and as far as I remember, I don’t work for anyone at the moment. I’m WIA, if you forgot.”

“I didn’t forget. I just think that you can still help out, even if you can’t fight like you did before.”

Cicely scoffs. “Help out?”

“Yeah, you can help out with the distribution of bibles, or spreading what Joseph has to say, or—”

“You sound just like those cultists, Luca.”

The downfall of Luca’s personality was how perceptive he was to other people. Luca loved to listen to people, and he was quick to pick up on the beliefs of others. He was influenced by those who preached to him and he could never break out of whatever system he had going on that – that when someone of power told him something, he had to believe it, no matter what his opinion was before.

She noticed it before, though had mostly put it down to his age. She had realised that his age wasn’t so much of an important factor when he started picking up on what those tyrannical leaders said, more so when he would take what Ruben had to say as gospel.

So she could have expected him to turn to Joseph the second the leader got his hands on him. Her absence from the Veteran’s centre had meant Luca had no immediate protection from what he had to bear witness to. Given the injury from the sniper when the resistance invaded the Veteran’s Centre, she had been offered a cabin that was just North of Widow’s creek so that she wasn’t involved in any warfare that may have taken place.

Cicely had her suspicions that there was more to her move than just the injury.

“I just think he makes sense,” Luca says. He waits for a moment before continuing, ripping up some grass between his fingers. “Joseph might not be right about everything, but when he talks it’s easy to understand him. He wants what is best for people. He wants to help.”

Cicely bites back a laugh, amused by his belief. She instead turns sour on him. “They are a cult, Luca. A _cult_. They kill people who don’t believe what they say and they believe that the end of the world is coming. Joseph has a whole fucked up history and you’re just going to listen to him because he told you that he—”

“We all make mistakes, Cicely.” A righteous tone gives away who is talking before she even needs to look for herself. She swallows down hard clenching her teeth to avoid the scream she _wished _she could let out. “My past is what defines me. Can you say the same? Have you begun to accept what happened to you, and use it for the betterment of your life?”

Luca shoots her an apologetic look as he stands up, dusting the dried mud from his trousers as he takes a few steps away from her. Cicely finally turns to look, lips pursed as she does so. “I think it’s unfair for you to judge me, when the only person who can judge me is God himself.”

“You are correct. _You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. _I only ask you if you would like help with accepting your past?”

“I’m fine,” Cicely answers him, looking directly at that smug face of a murderer that she only grows to hate each day. If Ruben wasn’t such a _dick_, she’d have walked away from this sooner. She would forget the money and deal with the consequences. Turn herself into the Kyrati forces and end up in the prison in the Himalayas. “I’ll deal with it all on my own. Is there a reason you’re looking for me?”

Joseph is easily readable. To the average person blinded by his supposed light around here, he may have seemed ever holy and incapable of doing anything that would constitute a sin. Cicely could see his wrath. His eyes lit with fire when someone defies him. That’s why everyone was getting killed. Could his brothers see it? Even his sister? They must. At least Jacob. He must see that Joseph isn’t all he claims to be.

A fraud. Someone who likely makes all this _shit _up. She heard enough from the religious ‘leaders’ she met around the world. You only need 3 people to make something a religion. She’d seen that far too many times. Jacob must realise that Joseph is delusional. He’s using the real world as a basis to make people turn to him. He’s narcissistic. He’s problematic. He’s going to kill her before she’d ever make it out of here alive.

“I wished to talk to you about our beliefs, if you have time.” Joseph spares her an opportunity to answer him, taking a seat beside her in the dirt. He has a pristine white shirt that covers his tattoos, the typical black jeans too. He comes close to a smile as he stares across the river. “The collapse is coming, and I am only here to save people.”

Cicely was prepared to snap back at him, like his face was a target and she had been working on her aim. She had every means to call him out, though she was surprised to see him so subtle. She found herself interested in what he meant. “What do you mean by the collapse?”

“The apocalypse, child,” Joseph tells her. He extends his hand out in front of him, gesturing over to the mountains. “I came to Hope County with one vision in mind. A natural shelter from a nuclear winter that is becoming more and more likely. I wanted a place that wouldn’t get bombed, that would survive a nuclear war that is just around the corner for us all.”

“I don’t think a nuclear war is likely.”

Joseph shakes his head as his eyes divert to her, a harsh stare hitting her. “I have spoken with God and he has told me, he has _shown _me that the world will cease to be. _And the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour_. It makes sense to me, Cicely. God has shown me what is to come of this world and how it gets there. The chain of events that will lead to the end of the world. How would you cope with such pressure? I am to save people. To get as many people to heaven as I can. Like God has trusted me.”

“What chain of events?” Cicely asks. Her training had lead her to an understanding of words for specific emotions. He was sure to say the same thing to everyone.

“It would be wrong of me to tell you, though the revelations given to us by God have already revealed to us what is to come. He tells us of the Lamb, the seals, and we have not listened. So God has told me to come here and help us all to see the way of our sins. He has instructed _my _family to provide shelter from the apocalypse he has brought upon us in the hopes that we can make people listen. You have the chance, Cicely. You can join our family. Eden’s Gate will protect you, just like we protect everyone here, just like we are protecting those that are important to you.”

Cicely swallows her pride as she looks back to Luca, his stern look blinding her to any emotion he could have shown. She sighs, looking back to Joseph as she shakes her head. “I have my own family.”

“No you don’t,” Joseph retorts. His bitter words hit her more so than she would have thought. It strikes her right in the heart. “Your father, your mother, your grandparents. They are all gone, Cicely. They are no longer with you and yet you still live in the past wishing for them to help you, protect you. Eden’s Gate can provide that for you. We can help you, we can shelter you from the future which is choking all of us. Cicely, Yasmin, it is only your choice.”

“You know my choice,” Cicely answers. She jumps to her feet, shaking her head at Luca before she turns from them both and begins to pace alongside the riverbank.

She walks for god knows how long. Her feet have begun to hurt her by the time she reaches any further sign of life, the boots she’s wearing covered in wet mud from the river and her shoulders stinging from the sun that has continued to warm them. That was a distraction from the dull ache she felt in her knee, one which the drugs they had around here seemed to repeal so well. She must have disassociated along the way. She’s not sure how much time has passed between leaving Luca and arriving at the house she was now in front of, but the sky was starting to reach a darker hue and her eyes had grown weary.

The river was in the past now, she’s in the middle of the dirt track road that makes up the majority of Holland Valley. There’s a hint of petrol in the air that she tells her she’s around the cultists, as usual. She gazes around the area for a moment, noticing the ‘US Autos’ sign that holds in the sky, then realising she’s at one of the outposts that John was holding from the resistance. At least she was with people who wouldn’t kill her on sight. They would take her weapons, mock her, then they would kill her.

She debates how easy it would be to go inside and act like one of the other cultists. She shifts her weight from one foot to the other as she tries to guess the number of men and women inside. There must have been around 10. She could take them if she needed. The only problem was the consequences of friendly fire that Jacob had so harshly worried them about. She wasn’t sure if she was ready to have a punishment from anyone, but now she was in Holland Valley, the punishment would come straight from John Seed.

Her sin tattooed on her skin then cut off? She would have first admitted to Joseph Seed that she kissed his brother.

Cicely only gets to a quarter of the way through he game plan on how to kill everyone in US Autos, before she is interrupted with some calling behind her, accompanied by the sound of an old engine running. She tries to ignore it, just in case it’s Luca with more of the good news, or if it’s her worst nightmare coming to preach about how near the end was.

Luckily, it was the reason she wanted to avoid killing anyone to begin with.

“Cicely Larson.” John pronounces her name in such a way that reminds her of his past. The annunciation is much clearer than Jacob’s own strong accented way. He gives her a typical grin when she meets his eyes, hands crossed behind her back. “It’s so great to see your face here again. I was sure that Jacob wouldn’t let you back here unless it was to make sure I was dead.”

Cicely humours him a bit too easily. “Unfortunately I wouldn’t be able to kill you, even if Jacob so kindly asked.”

“He mentioned. How is your leg?” John asks.

“Fine,” she tells him, “easy to walk on now. Hurts in the mornings. I’ve been shot in worse places.”

John raises his eyebrows, curiosity striking him. “Such as?”

“The one that hurts is the stomach.” Cicely recalls when she was shot down in the middle of Siberia. Mission gone wrong, the reason she ended up coming here. Her position was given away by a bear, of all things. She was shot instead of the bear, the group she was there to take down luckily saved her to torture her and she was broken out by a rookie named Joshua who wanted to make it big. “You don’t feel anything at first. You don’t even realise you’ve been shot. Then it hits you all at once, like someone shoved a hot poker into you and keeps twisting it round and round.”

“I will avoid that, then.”

John looks back to his men, gesturing his head forward to imply that they should leave. The three men each scurry off in their own directions, leaving Cicely and John alone. She wonders if he has a _thing _for being in control of situations. Having all of the power in the world.

She wouldn’t lie though. John Seed, cruel as he was said to be, would have caught her eye on the outside of this place. It was the Channing Tatum eyes, accompanied by the tattoos and the dark hair and beard. She imagined him to be a boy that always got his own way, whether he played fair or not. He was in a position where the only thing that mattered to him was _him_, and now he was with his family running a cult that requires constant sacrifice.

“I assume you won’t be working for Jacob for a while, then?” John asks, stepping forward until he stands directly beside Cicely. She shakes her head and he hums knowingly. “Are you residing at the Veteran’s Centre, still?”

“I’m in this other cabin, not too far from the border.”

John’s eyes widen ever so slightly. “You’re staying on your own? That’s not safe. It would be better if you stayed somewhere around others to make sure that nothing happened to you. As you are one of the special forces around here, of course.”

“The people here don’t know I’m a threat. They don’t talk to each other enough to put two and two together. As far as they can tell, I’m just some person who’s staying in a cabin and making the most of the weather.”

“But what if you stayed at my ranch?” John asks.

She takes his question as a joke at first, though when she looks to him and sees his expression without any falters, she realises that John proposed an idea that he was already very much settled upon in his head. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“Are you concerned Jacob will come looking for you and see that you’re missing?” John questions. He places a hand on Cicely’s shoulder and turns her towards him, smiling growing ever wider. “Has he come to visit you at all? You should realise that he is far too busy to be checking on you all the time. You should stay with me, and then we can help each other. You can keep watch around my ranch and… I will make sure that you get whatever you need. Plus, the company will be nice. Don’t you miss talking to people?”

“I talk to the fishermen.”

John’s laughter is over the top. His grip on her shoulder increases, too. “Proper interaction. You can help me and my best men out. We can plan for the future. We don’t know if there will be an attack in Holland Valley like there was at the Veteran’s Centre. It would be good if we had some inside knowledge on how to defend ourselves, especially from _you_.”

“What do you mean by inside knowledge?” Cicely asks.

“Jacob has expressed how grateful he is for you making sure that the resistance didn’t hurt anyone during that attack.” John lets go of her shoulder, bringing his hand to his mouth as he clears his throat. “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. But you saved a lot of our people. We’re grateful for that.”

So grateful that she was going to be forced into another mindless drone? Cicely wasn’t stupid. They may have been grateful but it was only for a further opportunity to show their strength around the county. Joseph was a man of god, but a man of politics more so. He was no better than the leaders of the country that plunged the world further into despair with each of their words.

Cicely isn’t sure what would be worse, though. To deny Joseph the right to control, or to deny John what he wants. She decides the later is her priority, so agrees with one single nod. “I’m sure I can stay here for a while. If Jacob needs me, I’m sure you will find out.”

“Wise choice,” John picks up a trademark smile as he answers her, tugging on her arm ever so gently to get her to follow him to his car. “You will find it’s nicer to stay with me too.”

And John isn’t a liar of any kind.

She’d been to his ranch before, but not to the bedrooms. Once they arrived he gave her a spare bedroom, the opposite end of the hall to him, with a fully kitted bed and an equally established collection of goods throughout the room. She was surprised by the wardrobes, the fine decorating, even the choice of bear skin rug that lined the floor on the left of the bed.

He’d waited behind her to see her reaction, similar to that of someone who wishes to see if you are pleased with their gift. She looks around the room with some surprise, unsure of how he had the time to keep things so tidy around here. She assumes that no one slept in here, at least not often, and finds herself a little more grateful that he offered her a room here.

Of course, that would only continue to be the case if he didn’t use it against her and kidnap her against her will at some point in the future.

“It’s nice in here,” Cicely comments, opening the patio door to the balcony of the room. She peeks out of the door to check there is no one on the other side before turning back to John with the corners of her lips slightly raised. “Thank you. It will definitely be nicer here. Warmer, too.”

“You’re welcome here any time.”

John’s name is called by someone downstairs, one of his VIPs she assumes, ending her time with him for the night. She wonders if she can get some information from him if she played nice. Given the appreciation he shows her with the nod of his head when he leaves, she thinks it may be a possibility.

She contemplates sitting on the balcony for a while, under the stars like used to. She almost does, she was so close to the floor that she could feel her weight move from her feet for the briefest of seconds. Though Cicely changes her mind last minute, deciding that sleep was a better option for her, especially given that the skies weren’t that clear. She could work on her father’s book another night. Today was for rest.

And, so it seemed, for avoiding Jacob. The second she’s dropped her army pants and her top layer tee shirt to the ground, she can hear the sound of his voice echoing through the quiet landscape outside.

She lays still in bed, worried a dog might sniff her out if he wanted them to, thoughts stuck on Jacob though not moving past the very last time she _actually _saw him.

When she kissed him.

When he did, in his own way, kiss her back.

Though she had not seen him since Luca pulled her away from him, whilst she was staring down at him with wide eyes, unsure of how to react. She had her orders come through doctors and Luca, she had her transportation done by whoever was free.

Jacob was avoiding her, and it seemed that both brothers wanted his place.

Their reasoning? Maybe not too different to both of Jacob’s.


	9. fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “She’s changing you, brother.”
> 
> “You’re wrong,” Jacob tells him. John is still silent, though the shadow she can see through the small cracks make her think he’s standing to the side, right by to where she is.
> 
> “She’s making you weak,” Joseph says. His voice follows around the room with him, pacing himself to keep his speech fluid. She’d seen presidents that were worse public speakers than Joseph Seed. “You’re not following what God has given us, we aren’t following his guidance.”
> 
> “I am not weak,” Jacob states.
> 
> Joseph scoffs, an unlikely mannerism. “How are we to enlighten the people when our own leaders don’t follow God’s orders.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahhhh im so sorry guys. i was meant to update this but i started a job in january which took up most of my time. but!! my dissertation is done, im handing it in monday, and after i've done two pieces of coursework due over the next two months then i'm officially done with university!! though no graduation from me bc of the rona. hope you're all keeping well. i haven't forgotten about this fic and dont worry!! i wont!! if you didn't know, i work for the nhs, so i am working a lot recently and doing shifts (plus i live in london so im sure you understand my position) but i will update this as much as i can!

_“So do not be afraid of them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs. Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” **– Matthew 10:26-28**_

A few weeks of rest can do someone, _anyone_, the world of good.

Cicely revels in the idea that the reason she’s been able to get away from the cult is by sitting right at the heart of it. The camp that she had set up at John’s ranch wasn’t nearly as quiet as the cabin which Jacob had offered her and kept her in until she wanted out, but by all means was it a hell of a lot nicer. From the range of food offered for breakfast, to the fresh coffee that John insisted Cicely actually liked (despite her denouncement of coffee after using it to stay up for way too many nights) – Cicely actually _liked _Hope County.

Well, Holland Valley.

Let it not be confused that the entirety of Hope County was enjoyable to her. For the most part it was a beautiful place, as her friend Jackson had always described to her during the long nights they would patrol camp. He was a green beret in the joint task force they had set up whilst they were in the Ukraine, and due to their similar ages they managed to get pretty close. He’d show her pictures of all his trips around America and Montana always looked picturesque. The Whitetail Mountains were nice, a quiet place overrun with vermin who were fighting a religious war, but Hope County was exactly what you’d expect from America. All she had left to judge was the Henbane River, though she wasn’t sure when she’d see the final Seed sibling.

Not that she, _Faith_, was a sibling of the brothers by blood. More of a religious, sister of the soul that Joseph had unlocked along the way.

Part of her enjoyment of Hope County also came from the fact that numerous cult VIPS were approaching her with targets on heads which they would pay her for. John didn’t know, nor did anyone else most likely, but she was getting a personal allowance of $1000 per kill if she let them take the credit for it. She’d happily let them do that, and she’d also be more than welcome to make her shot sloppy and have a bullet on the side of the head, rather than straight between the eyes.

Beside, she had a phone now, and she had been ordering the stuff she never could get before to be sent to her address back in London (which her kind neighbour, Suzy, would take in for her no questions asked) so she could go home from this operation and walk into make up palettes, nice clothes, and some killer hills to show off when she finally made her career to being a Instagram Influencer that carried around a sniper wherever she went.

Once the _Baby Got Peach _palette was back in stock and she was able to get one, then she’d move onto purchasing some more weapons to put under her floorboards at home. America isn’t so bad when you have a career as a mercenary with a nice body and pretty eyes.

In the grand scheme of things, pretending that someone else was executing her kills was working out pretty well for her.

“Name’s Jerry Richardson,” the VIP, unnamed still to Cicely, tells her as he takes a drag from the cigarette between his fingers, “last time we saw him, Jacob had him kept at his human farm.”

Another of the cultists comes forward with a picture of a middle aged man who has likely changed a bit since he was smiling with a gun cradled in his arms. “He was caught try’na steal some ammo from Elk Jaw Lodge.”

“Fuckin’ idiot.”

“He is a fuckin’ idiot,” the VIP chimes in, repeating the words of the female cultist behind him. Cicely knew her only as _Ray_. They had shared a beer over a table a few times during her stay in Holland Valley. “But that makes him a better target. Say, do they teach you English ones how to kidnap people of interest.”

Cicely starts to wonder whether Jerry Richardson is the idiot in this whole situation. “Yeah. Extraction.”

“Have you done one?” Ray asks her. She raises her brow in anticipation. “Can you do an extraction for him?”

“I can extract the target if you need. I thought I was just killing them, though.”

The VIP hums. “You were. Now ya’ got a new job. We need ya’ to bring him to us so we can get some information from him. He knows where the resistance are keeping one of our brothers.”

“Just ask Jacob to talk to him. I get paid to kill.”

“Jacob ain’t that easy to talk to. You might have got to speak to him but none of us have even seen the man. We need you to get him for his.”

Cicely shakes her head, looking across to the door of the ranch. She notices John’s car pull up so looks away again, hoping not to catch his attention. “Like I said, you pay me to kill people.”

“I’ll give ya’ five thousand if you get him to me before the end of the week,” the VIP offers, “do we have a deal?”

She shouldn’t have considered it, given the fact she’d be returning to the one place in this County she did not want to be seen, especially caught kidnapping someone who was likely to be one of Jacob’s test subjects. She could say no, find John and see if he needed anything so she could enjoy the fact he clearly was attracted to her in some way.

It wasn’t her fault he got a semi when she fired an old RPG at a training plane and struck it first him. It also wasn’t her fault that he had lingered longer than needed after they bumped into each other when she had just got out the shower and was only wearing shorts and a crop top.

She looks back in the direction of John’s car, this time catching John’s eye and soliciting a wave and smile from his as he leans on the bonnet waiting for his men to fill up the back. “Alright. I’ll do it. He’ll be at US Auto at zero-six hundred tomorrow.”

“Zero six hundred?” the VIP repeats.

“Six am,” she tells him, “be there or I take him to John instead.”

The small group disperses when Cicely walks away, heading outside of the ranch to where she can see John. One benefit of having the youngest Seed wrapped around her little finger is that he’d always try to appease her in the simplest ways he can. If he wasn’t such a flirt, and he could stick to just _one _girl at a time, he would definitely have been a good husband one day.

Though whether someone would want to marry a religion obsessed ex-lawyer that liked to control everything and had a mean streak against those who didn’t listen to him word for word, was debatable. They’d have to have a dull personality that purely liked him for his face and tattoos.

Or they like the arrogance.

An older lady, Annie, who once was part of SUA before Ruben began to hate her for her more caring approach to life, had told her about her life story one evening when the power had gone out. She’d married a man, divorced him after 5 years because he had the personality of a cardboard box, and then went on a dating spree of every arrogant, self-absorbed, but _oh so _attractive man she could find in the Special Forces.

Annie enjoyed the latter part of her love life a whole lot more than the married part.

To each their own.

John turns to Cicely as she approaches, her mind occupied by the gun she was carrying and checking for ammo. She can feel his eyes on her as she approaches, though she ignores it as best she can, favouring the gun to look at.

“Need a lift?”

Cicely finishes strapping the hand gun to her thigh before she looks up to John. When she goes meet his gaze, he offers another inviting smile as if he wants to convince her that going with him is a better idea than, well, _not_. “Where are you heading?”

“I’m meeting my brothers at the Veterans Centre. Where are you heading?” John asks.

“FANG Centre,” Cicely tells him, “Luca and I are doing some surveillance.”

She won’t go into detail, though she only shared some fake information since he had told her unneeded details, too. Though she wondered why the Seeds were meeting up today – the three of the rarely spent time together as a group unless there was an important development in something they were working on.

“I’ll drop you.” John gestures over to the passenger door, nodding his head to give her permission to enter. “We haven’t spoken in a while. It feels like forever since we talked.”

John talks to her like he’s the ex-boyfriend that’s still in love with her. Cicely knew because Brian, the ex-Canadian Special Ops soldier that she was with for a few months, did the same thing. “Not much you’ve missed really. I’ve been enjoying the nature around her, star gazing when I can. Talking to some of the guys.”

“How’s the leg?”

“Absolutely fine,” Cicely tells him, “like I never got shot.”

She notices the subtle change in expression from John, his lips falling a little straighter and the enjoyment of her company ceasing. He nods once, turning back to the man who was packing his car with weapons. He dismisses the man with a hand gesture, the cultist running away as soon as his leader commanded him to.

“That does mean we’re gonna have to send you back to Jacob soon,” John comments, shades pulled over his eyes when he returns his attention to Cicely.

_That _was what it was about, huh.

“I would prefer to abstain.” Cicely answers. She shrugs, resting her hand on her hip. She wasn’t particularly lying. “Is there no way I can stay here in Holland Valley?”

John raises his eyebrow at her words. “Why would you wanna stay here?”

Cicely shrugs again. She could tell him that she liked working under him, though she wouldn’t be so honest that it blew her cover. She wanted to stay here because she didn’t want to be near to Joseph or Luca, or anyone else she knew from the Veteran’s Centre for that matter. She wouldn’t also tell John that it was because she kissed his brother and now things between them were awkward and she would have preferred to live out her service in the quieter part of the county.

So she stays generic, smile on her lips as she looks to John to assure him of _something_. Hopefully he wouldn’t think of it in any other way than generic, but it was _John _she was speaking with. “It’s nice. I like it here.”

John _probably_ took that personally.

The smile on his face as he does take it personally and think that _its nice because of me _and _Cicely likes it because of me_is enough for her to regret saying she didn’t want to leave. She probably needs to sharing slight, untamed emotions around here.

The thing about John is that he’s _so _self-obsessed that he has an innate inability to be able to realise that someone, in this case Cicely, doesn’t particularly want to get involved with him. He spends the majority of the car ride to the FANG Centre either staring at her when his eyes should be on the road, or making small talk as best he can on topics that really didn’t bother her all that much.

For example, she didn’t care all too much for the availability of rocket launchers in the Henbane River region, and she also didn’t particularly care for how the weather seemed to be completely different to what it was usually like this time of day.

Her longing stare out the window wasn’t enough for John to realise she wasn’t listening, since the only time she was able to escape his endless rambles was when he stopped at the front of the FANG Centre and she said goodbye to him midway through his sentence. Even then, he shot her his million dollar smile and drove off still convinced that any time that he asked, Cicely Larson would be dropping on her knees for him.

No, it was the other brother that had her under that enchantment.

The walk back to the Veterans Centre was long enough for Cicely to be able to clear her head and create a plan of action. Everyone there knew her, and no doubt Luca had already caught her on the cameras. She hadn’t seen him since when he tried to indoctrinate her with the cult mentality and she assumed that he’d only been further pulled into the cult.

She knew she should have done something about it, tried to get him to come with her away from whatever propaganda Joseph had been shoving in his face in an attempt to show him the _right path_. Somehow she had caught the feeling that there wasn’t any way to reverse whatever Luca had done to him, if she followed what went on in the Veterans Centre before.

That _thing_, project, whatever it was – it was the reason that he’d been turned over to the cult. Cicely was sure of it.

Luckily, Cicely doesn’t have to keep undercover at the Veterans Centre. There’s no signs of John, Jacob, or Joseph for that matter. The only people she does see is various people around the site that she knew from before, each of them either greeting her or nodding their head in her direction.

Her aim was to avoid the Seeds, possibly see Luca to check he was still okay, identify Jerry Richardson and then set up camp somewhere nearby until extraction in the very early hours of the morning.

“Was I not clear before?”

Cicely stops at the sound of Joseph’s voice running cold through the air. She frowns, unsure how she could hear his voice from the room she was in. She leaves the files she was reading through on the table and moves over to the door. His voice had come through the door, though she wasn’t sure where they were.

“You were.” Jacob’s voice now sounds, again running through the room but the underlying tone completely different. He seems to be unnerved by Joseph, whatever they’re talking about. She can hear the footsteps as though they are approaching, though decides to stay by the door to hear more. “I know that she doesn’t need it.”

There’s a pause that follows the steps ceasing to be heard. Cicely can see a shadow peeking through the door at the end of the corridor, though she’s not sure who it belongs to. The accidental comfort that comes with Jacob’s voice is disturbed by the pain and sorrow that Joseph always brought with him.

“She does. She’s no different to anyone else,” Joseph states, cold voice a reminder that she’s unwelcomed in a place like this. There’s something telling her they’re talking about her, too.

And like always, his presence is completely unwelcomed to Cicely.

The movement starts again and this time Cicely sees John turning around the corner, the two brothers following behind him. She makes a move for the broken wardrobe on the other side of the room, knowing that it’s barely ever used, barricading herself inside in the hope she wouldn’t get caught by one of them needing somewhere to store their jacket.

So much for this being a _simple_ extraction.

She’d been in worse situations, anyway. After all the times she’d been forced into circumstances she didn’t want to be in, especially those which meant she was holding herself up on a ceiling for a longer period of time than needed because the people she was following decided to have a conversation beneath her.

Her training was really starting to pay off in _every _way. Cicely keeps her back against the wooden frame and listens to what she can from outside. She knows the three brothers are on the other side of the door and she keeps her breathing as shallow as possible incase someone picks up on it.

“She’s our most talent soldier here and she follows whatever orders we give, no matter what they are. Save the seats in the exposure rooms for those who we take from the resistance.”

Joseph voices his concern at Jacob’s statement without a second though. Cicely wonders what John has to say about all of this. He never discussed the military problems with John, though he still had an input in Joseph’s book. “She’s changing you, brother.”

“You’re wrong,” Jacob tells him. John is still silent, though the shadow she can see through the small cracks make her think he’s standing to the side, right by to where she is.

“She’s making you weak,” Joseph says. His voice follows around the room with him, pacing himself to keep his speech fluid. She’d seen presidents that were worse public speakers than Joseph Seed. “You’re not following what God has given us, we aren’t following his guidance.”

“I am not weak,” Jacob states. 

Joseph scoffs, an unlikely mannerism. “How are we to enlighten the people when our own _leaders _don’t follow God’s orders.” 

There’s a silence that fills the room. All that Cicely can hear is the creak of the floorboards that fills the gap of the voice that likes to always be heard. She wonders what’s going through Jacob’s mind. She didn’t expect him to defend anyone, though substituting herself into the conversation may lead to a different situation.

“Shall I give this project to Faith?”

John speaks this time, his voice catching her off guard. “That’s a mistake.”

“Keeping that girl here was a _mistake_,” Joseph tells them both. His tone makes her believe that there’s an underlying issue that hasn’t been addressed. Does John not trust Faith? If she was still in SRR this would have been a great case to be working. No one seemed to trust anyone – even their fake family members.

There’s more silence, followed by the sound of hands slamming down on a table. It shocks her no more than the brother stood on the other side of the door, who takes a step backwards in fear. Jacob’s larger form was enough to worry anyone.

Especially when it’s added on top of his voice that’s filled with anger, that’s when even Cicely fears the man she found herself caring so much for. “She _isn’t _a mistake.”

“Why do you defend her brother?” Joseph asks. His fear of his brother seems to be minimal, if any at all. “What has she given to _you_?”

Jacob’s anger continues. His heavy breathing added to the roughness of each syllable is enough to concern Cicely. After all this time she hadn’t seen him, she wondered why he still kept her in his good books. Best soldier? Maybe it wasn’t about her. “I told you she’s our best soldier, and _that _is why I keep her around.”

The looming silence is enough for Cicely to realise that Joseph isn’t going to change her mind on the topic. Her eyes watch the cracks and the unmoving shadows until she’s sure that no one will approach. There’s no words from Jacob, not from her other defender John, though Joseph won’t give anything more.

And why should he?

He was the leader of a religious campaign to take over the world and create an order that wasn’t too dissimilar to other religious cults around the world, just minus the discrimination and the killing of their own mentality. Joseph wanted people to listen to him, whether his visions and teachings from God held any weight whatsoever.

Jacob Seed was just another minion of Joseph’s, with a little added bonus of being in the correct career to be able to call himself a military expert. So how could he really argue with the will of a man who sees himself as God?

“Cicely Larson doesn’t need it.” Jacob starts to move again, though she’s not sure where. Relief washes through her, though it’s short lived when he starts to speak again on his way out. “But if you want her to have it, then she has to have it.”


End file.
